Surgeon General's Warning
by Dualism aka Dualshine
Summary: Life's never perfect, but it can be pretty close, you know? For the Strife family, it was as close to perfection as you could get. And then the Leonharts moved in. Poor boys. [Cleon] [Soriku] [Akuroku] [Zemyx]
1. Prologue: Enter the Players

**Disclaimer:** I asked Sandy Claws for the rights to Kingdom Hearts. Instead, I got a pony. Damn Jack.

 **Disclaimer Ver. 2:** I don't own Kingdom Hearts. Assume this applies to the entire story! Even if I forget a disclaimer for a particular chapter! I promise you I did not, for the space of time that said chapter was written, own Kingdom Hearts!

 **Notes: HEAVILY REVISED**. As always i'm sorry if you like the original version better but i didn't and ultimately that's what i have to be faithful to! ilu all, sorrryyyyy

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 **Surgeon General's Warning** **AKA** **Don't Choke My Chocobo!** **Prologue: Enter the Players**

So.

If I were one of those new-age mumbo-jumbo freaks who play on the idea of fate and karma and all that sort of crap, I'd probably be a little more at ease with the situation my brothers have wholeheartedly thrown themselves into. Not that I don't believe in higher-powers and stuff like that; I guess I just figure that people should live like the world's their own personal show. Life's too short, you know?

But unfortunately, the startling lack of anything resembling the occult in my life illustrates perfectly my irritation with our family's current state of affairs. I am not happy. I am not happy at all. It does not matter that, if you wanna look at this objectively, the whole ruckus we-the-Strife-family have found ourselves in might be considered interesting, for some value of the word interesting. It does not matter that you could even, if you wanted to throw away your life, probably even call it funny.

(Don't call it funny. Seriously. I'm not joking. Does this look like the face of a man who's enjoying himself? No. No, it does not. And for the record, we're pretty offended at the gambling pools that have erupted across town as to who will reign supreme in our private little war with the Leonharts. To those involved: if procreation is on your list of Things I Must Do - stop it. This has gone quite far enough, and we're about ready to fuck your shit up. There is about one person in this world who's allowed to find my brother's unfortunate crusade against tyranny and oppression funny, and he only gets rights on account of blowjobs. The rest of you? This has gone quite far enough.

If it's not obvious, I don't quite enjoy the same amount of fervor my brothers do when it comes to walkin' the war-path. If they really wanted hardcore ninja-skills, they should have picked someone else. Yuffie, maybe. Honestly, they chose the wrong guy for this. But the filial bonds of blood will prevail. That means I'm involved.

In the interest of keeping my audience, I should probably explain.

So, once upon a time, our parents got divorced. It wasn't a big deal, and the only reason I'm really mentioning it is because the divorce precipitated the move, and none of this would've happened without the move.

I don't think they hated each other, exactly; they didn't talk enough to hate each other. But everyone's got a right to a future, yeah? I guess they figured that their kids were old enough to be able to handle life with a single parent. Or they probably figured they should cut their losses and run. Whatever.

Honestly? I didn't give a shit. Sora did, probably. Sora gives a shit about everything. Roxas did, in his own way. But our dad, while never exactly abusive, wasn't exactly what you'd call overflowing with paternal love. He never spent that much time with us, and it's difficult to care about a person when you're at a band luncheon and your dad's on the opposite side of the room hitting on the geo teacher. How do you care about someone like that? Answer: I don't know. I definitely don't know why my brothers did. But they're different, I guess.

So, divorce, by way of sitting through amicable dinners while the parents happily chatted about lawyers and division of assets, and sitting in amicable hallways while the parents happily chatted to lawyers about division of assets, and sitting in bed while one of your brothers raged and the other one refused to, no matter how much you thought it would probably be good for him, cry.

I'm not the big-brother type. Maybe things would be easier if I was. But kids like seeking out a warmer and larger body for comfort. And it didn't bother me. Not at all.

I think that, of the three of us, the news hit Roxas the hardest. It's not that he was particularly close to our father; the whole workaholic shtick kind of places a damper on most sorts of parental devotion, after all. But Roxas thinks a lot. Roxas wants a lot. He's weird, and forgetful, and happy most of the time (He is. Don't...don't let all the things that happen make you think that he's not; Roxas is happy. Roxas is good), but while Roxas has a long rope, he can't get to the end of it without fraying a bit. He realized before any of us how much things were gonna change. Maybe that shifted something in him.

Sora-I don't know many synonyms for 'incorrigible optimist,' so we'll use that. Sora's Sora. I can't talk about him as easily as other people can; he's my brother. I've known him my whole life. I'll take for granted things that you all probably won't. But Sora's walking, talking emotion. Sora's loud and bright and stubborn, and stupid, and the world is his. I don't mean that he's arrogant. I mean that the world is _his_ , and Sora would spend his entire life taking care of it if he needed to, if Roxas would let him.

I don't really like thinking about that first night. Don't much like thinking about the rest of the nights, either. It would have been easier for them if they didn't care.

So we did what we could, and I distracted them like I could, and we played video games and when we got tired of video games we played with wooden swords and when we got tired of that we snuck out to the play island and pretended we were knights, just like we used to when we were little. And as dumb as it may sound, we knew that as long as we all stuck together, it would be okay.

And it was. It really was.

At least until the Leonharts came.

But again, I'm getting ahead of myself.

After the finalization of the divorce between my parents, my mother decided that a change of scenery would be good for her precious babes. This news was taken with a bit less good-will than the previous was. Roxas alternated between stealing the car keys and acts of petty sabotage. I think Sora's exact words were "I'M RUNNING AWAY." Of course, being the eldest brother, I was mature about it all. I could have slashed the tires or pinched the ferry tickets or maybe gone on a hunger strike. But I didn't. I was cool. I was calm. And if my mothers wardrobe maybe underwent a slightly…morbid…change, it definitely wasn't my fault. I thought she liked black lace petticoats.

Unfortunately, it was all for naught, and after a month of tears, threats, and curses (by which, obviously, I mean to imply that we maybe sort of removed a more-expensive-than-planned part of the car and then flushed it down the toilet (we had to pay for the part. And the toilet)), my mother tore her three children away from their perfect lives on Destiny Island and shipped us all to the smoky, industrialized suburbs of Hollow Bastion.

Alright, it was nice. Factory-manufactured flora aside, the houses were large, and the lawns were sprawling, and everywhere we looked there were kids running around, skimming their knees and tumbling off merry-go-rounds and wailing to high heaven about their lack of a cell phone.

Yeah, it was…nice. Really nice. Not as nice as Destiny Islands, obviously, but it wasn't bad, and I wouldn't be overstating it if I say that we fell in love with Radiant Garden on sight.

Of course, being a malicious, horrible villainess at heart, my mother decided to plant her final surprise on us when it was already too late to throw ourselves off a cliff in protest. See, when she told us we'd be moving to Radiant Garden, we all assumed that we'd be living in, you know, our own house.

Nope. No separate living dwelling for us. Instead, we'd all be rooming with some obscure cousin we may have met once at a Christmas party twelve years ago.

Mom lectured us for hours. About how nice he was to offer us a home, how sweet, and, of course: "No fist fights, no loud noises, and if I catch any of you playing a single practical joke on the poor boy, it'll be Discovery Channel for a week!"

Naturally, none of us had any intention of heeding her (orders) advice. I mean, hello: teenage boys. Asking us to behave would be like asking a burger not to grease. But, for the sake of our poor mother's nerves, we agreed to tone down the horse play. For a few days, at least.

And then finally, after what must have been an eternity of _no-no-no_ , my mother pulled into a large driveway paved with white flowers, green trees, and, like, twenty chocobos.

I had maybe five seconds to stare wide-eyed at the fact that a honking huge bird was taking a crap while staring right at us when the front door of the house swung wide, and our prodigal cousin emerged.

That was the first time in twelve years any of us laid eyes on Cloud Strife.

He was young. Mid twenties, probably, but like hell I was ever crazy enough to ask him his age. Shorter than me, but not by much; lean; distant looking, like his thoughts were somewhere else. He stood there a bit stiffly as my mother threw her arms around him, laughing about how handsome he was, how many years it had been since she'd last seen him, and more of that bubbly touchy-feely stuff that always makes me a little awkward. It was maybe two minutes before he finally managed to extricate himself from my mother's clutches, but the moment he did, he turned to face us.

Now, the thing about Cloud is, you always sort of wonder whether or not he's been in the military. I mean, he's not the gruff, barking sort of guy you see in movies; he's too quiet for that. But there's a sternness to him - a calm sort of self-possession laced with sadness and anger and so much angst he probably belongs in a Russian novel. Sora stood up a little straighter under his scrutiny. Roxas shifted like he might follow suit, then settled for crossing his arms. I might have made an embarrassing noise, but that's just between you and me.

In case you haven't gathered, I'm not exactly one for confrontation. Note this. It's important later.

Anyway, embarrassing noises aside, our first meeting unraveled pretty much the way one would expect it to. Cloud stared at each of us, nodded towards the house, then spun on his heel and walked back in. We all followed him. And that was that for the day. He just kind of disintegrated into his room, and left us all to unpack.

It took Roxas a day to form an uneasy camaraderie with Cloud. To be honest, this had less to do with their dubious social skills and more to do with the fact that they're both weirdos and probably had a grand old time bonding over their lack of (mostly temporary, in Roxas's case) discernible enthusiasm for life. Point is, by nightfall of the second day, Cloud was nodding at Roxas in respect before he disappeared back into his room. Naturally, Sora and I reacted to this development exactly how any decent brothers would: we jumped the little punk and grilled him for details. What was Cloud like? Why wouldn't he speak? Was he angry? Was he depressed? Was he going to slash our throats during the night? And why the hell was his backyard teeming with chocobos?

Roxas, being Roxas, shrugged, said he knew as little as we did, and tucked himself under the covers of the bunk bed he and Sora shared. Sora sighed, swore he'd extract the information somehow, and climbed into his comforter. I retreated to my own bedroom a few minutes later and locked my door. Then, for good measure, I moved the dresser to block it.

Sora was the second to worm his way into Cloud's heart. No one was really surprised about that. The kid's a freak. He once took a trip to a prison for a sociology class his freshman year of high school. Next day, the prison called. Somehow, in the space of, like, three hours, he'd single-handedly converted twelve convicts to religion (different religions), drawn multiple confessions out of nine criminals, taught four embroidery (strange, taking into account that Sora's doesn't know embroidery), and had by some means brought the entire prison refectory to tears. (We questioned him about it later. He just shrugged and said something about 'finding the light.' We figure it amounts to about the same thing as all of Tidus Highwind's blabber about 'the toxin.')

So when I spotted Sora ordering Cloud around two days after our arrival, instructing him as to where exactly he should place the oven ("I said to the _left_ , Cloud, c'mon!") like the slave driver we all know he secretly is, I just rolled my eyes and continued unpacking. That night, Cloud ruffled Sora's hair and offered him a rare smile before nodding at Roxas and heading up to bed.

In case you're interested, I was gifted with a glare. Needless to say, I added a desk to the barricade blocking my bedroom door.

This lasted for so long I started contemplating writing a will. Then out of no where, things (as they are wont to do) changed. It began like this:

I'd been outside washing the car, flicking soapsuds at random passer-bys and most definitely not aiming the hose nozzle at every car that drove by (and by 'most definitely not,' I mean 'so totally was'). Now, the thing about RG is that everyone's pretty laidback; it's something in the water, me and Roxas figure. So despite their impromptu soakage, most of the drivers and joggers just grinned and waved.

I stood, pondering this phenomenon while absentmindedly soaking myself in the spray, when I heard one of Cloud's chocobos wailing. Now, let me tell you, there's not much worse on the ears than hearing one of those birds screeching its gizzard off. After stemming the flow of blood from my ears, I looked around to see which one of those birds was crying this time. It only took a few minutes before I spotted the big black thing tangled in the chrysanthemums. Naturally, being a good citizen, I took it upon myself to extricate the poor creature. I didn't even spray it. That deserves a medal.

I glanced it over for a few seconds, pondering the best method to employ in order to neatly extract it from its flowery prison, before I figured 'screw it,' grabbed it by the neck, and yanked..

It took a minute for the poor thing to dislodge itself from the garden, but the moment it was free it settled into my arms like a good sport and kind of wrapped his big old wings around my shoulders. It was precious.

Or at least, it was until Cloud came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder.

Let the jury note that I did not jump. I didn't even flinch. I stood my ground and took it like a man. ("Took what?" the jury may ask. And to that I answer: shut up and let me tell the stupid story.) Slowly, oh so slowly, I turned around, willing the person behind me to be anyone other than my cold, cruel, murderous fiend of a cousin. This went over about as well as could be expected. Which is not at all.

Cloud stared at me. I stared back (read: gulped slightly and edged backwards. I mean, nope, there was no way I was going to be in this psycho's presence for more than a minute, especially while one of his precious chocobos had me in a choke-hold. He'd probably cut me open and string me up by the intestines. Slam me into the windshield and wipe it clean with my blood. Shove the hose I was cradling down my throat and fill me to the brim with water. Or something.

This, as my continued existence in this world can attest, is not what happened.)

"Thank you," he said. "Vinnie's got a bad habit of playing with the flowers." He closed his mouth, paused, and opened it again.

"Oh. And by the way. Your desk, drawers, chairs, couches, and shelves were all blocking your bedroom door. I took the liberty of rearranging them for you."

And then he turned around and strode back through the house door.

I stood there, stock-still, for what must have been an hour. When a bright red car drove by five minutes later, I almost forgot to hose it.

That night, after Cloud finished ruffling Sora's hair and nodding companionably at Roxas, he turned to look at me. He took a step forward.

If my life were a movie, the music would've risen in a dramatic crescendo. Violins would be playing. A babe would be sobbing in the background. Far away, you'd hear gunshots, and the subtitles would read _Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn._

He took a step toward me.

I thought solemn thoughts.

Another step.

I wished my family a fond farewell-

And then a hand rested itself upon my shoulder for a split second before a warm body pushed past me on its way up the stairs.

When I again became aware of my surroundings, I could hear Sora and Roxas whispering to each other. Something along the lines of "He looks like he's gone into shock," and "I think Cloud's killed him."

I blinked the hazy darkness from my eyes, and looked at the two little jerks I call brothers. They were staring at me with twin expressions of supreme amusement. It would've been funnier if it weren't at my expense.

"Nice one, Demyx," Sora said.

I sniffed. Bastards.

But I really couldn't hide the relieved grin that split my face a second afterwards.

The next year and a half passed in relative peace. By 'relative,' I mean that I only flooded the house twice, Sora broke a paltry six articles of furniture, and Roxas outgrew his frankly alarming and possibly illegal (pretty sure you need a permit for it in the suburbs?) desire to successfully ride a chocobo. I'd just been accepted to Hollow Bastion University: the leading research uni in the field of marine biology, and home to the best music program this side of Atlantica. Sora was a rising high school senior, and already had a thousand and one Struggle scouts prostrating themselves at his feet in supplication. Roxas, as a junior, still had another year to go before he would really start thinking of college, but that kid's always turned heads, and he had the class Valedictorian as a best friend; skateboarding plus a high GPA plus good looks (so inherited from my side of the family) plus being on the fast track towards inheriting Sora's title the moment Sora graduated, equaled a pretty mellow Roxas.

Yes, all was right in the world.

And then the Leonharts came.


	2. Chapter 1: Say What?

**Chapter One: Say What?**

Cloud did not mope.

Moping was for the slightly-too-relationship-preoccupied young (or old/in-between) adult who'd just been dumped by their significant other. Moping was for the definitely-too-self-absorbed middle schooler who'd just had their cell phone impounded by a righteous parent. Moping was for the senior who'd just been rejected from their first choice college. Moping was for the people who liked belittling totally reasonable expressions of sadness by assigning it a word with somewhat derisive connotations.

Cloud didn't mope. He mused. He languished. He deliberated and ruminated and thought, all in a very mature, adult-like manner, because Cloud, as we all know, was a mature adult, and all the movies said that mature adults were supposed to have their lives together. So when Sora plopped into the kitchen seat opposite his and happily proclaimed, "You're moping!" Cloud was understandably offended. He illustrated his affront by scooping another spoonful of vanilla ice cream out of the carton and into his mouth.

"You're gonna have to get up sooner or later," Sora said, leaning back in his chair. "We've got chores today."

"You've got chores today."

"We're a family," Sora said. "What's yours is mine and what's mine is yours."

Cloud took a slow, deliberate mouthful of ice cream. Sora sighed. "He moved across the neighborhood."

Cloud chomped down on his ice cream and frowned.

"You're still going to the same grad school," Sora said. "You're still drinking at the same bar. You're still learning how to knit together, which is still, for the record, just as old-fashioned as it was one hundred years ago, and if you feed me the _my sweaters aren't going to make themselves_ line I'm going to send Kairi after you."

Cloud had spent a long hour coming up with that line. It upset him a little that it hadn't worked the way he'd wanted it to.

"Point is," Sora said, "Half a mile away, with the love of his life, who I'm pretty sure has been waiting for him to propose since adolescence, and who's probably about a month away from throwing her hands up in the air and doing it herself. They were always going to move in together. This isn't exactly a surprise."

To be honest, the surprise had mostly been that they hadn't asked Cloud to come along, but Cloud wasn't exactly going to say that.

"Look," Sora said, with a final sigh. "I know you feel upset. You have a right to be upset. These are your best friends. It's okay that you're upset. But Zack and Aerith aren't going to suddenly stop loving you just because they're spending a lot of time doing dubiously legal things in bed, and you're never gonna realize that if you spend the next year overdosing on ice cream. Get up. You look a little bit like Vinnie does every time Lucrecia walks by."

Cloud swirled his spoon in his by-now-mostly-melted ice cream. "Don't make fun of Vinnie," he said at last. "He's just sensitive."

Sora laughed. "I'm not making fun. Vincent's a chocobo in love with Mr. Hojo's moomba. Vinnie's pretty much got moping rights. But _you_ aren't going to feel better until you distract yourself, and _I_ am not gonna feel better until we finish our chores. So get up."

"You're so stupid," Cloud muttered. But he got up, and really, that was accomplishment enough.

"Cheer up," Sora said, dipping a finger into the melting carton of ice cream and walking out the door. "And look at the bright side: at least we'll get new neighbors!"

Miles away, a family of four slouched in a small suburban, boxes and bags spilling onto their laps and over their feet. A handsome brunet sat in the driver's seat, his eyes flicking periodically from the road before him to the passengers behind. Beside him, his wife alternated between staring out the window and turning to smile at her children, who each sat solemnly in the backseat, luggage separating them like a wall. Then:

"So, explain again why we're doing this?"

Sharp gray eyes glanced up at the rearview mirror from where they were watching the road, but the driver said nothing. Likewise, the slim man who sat next to the speaker shifted slightly in discomfort, but also remained silent. The pretty woman sitting in the passenger's seat glowered at her husband, then sighed.

"The apartment was getting awfully small, honey," she said. "You complained about it all the time."

"Didn't mean I wanted us to move," the boy responded.

"I know," the woman said, with the same expression a saint might wear if that saint were currently stranded in Vegas. "But your father and I still think it was the right decision. You know how cramped it was. The apartment was barely livable. And you know we're sorry for making you go through this, but you've already graduated, honey. You'll be living in a dorm soon." She snorted. "Anyway, I'm not sure why you're complaining. You'll be closer to Axel. Which, of course, will wreak havoc on my blood pressure, sure, but should be all right for you." She sighed, then twisted in her seat.

"It's not going to be horrible, Riku."

In his seat, Riku raised his head from where he'd been glaring at the floor, and ventured a glance at the woman seated in front of him. He looked away almost immediately. "Nah," he muttered. "I guess it won't."

The woman slumped in her seat in relief, and shot a grin at her husband.

"See!" she chirped happily. "I told you he'd be okay with it eventually! Didn't I, Leon?"

An hour later, Cloud snuck back into the kitchen and began rummaging through the innards of his refrigerator, looking for the unopened carton of ice cream he knew was there. Five minutes later, he emerged victorious and sat himself down at the kitchen table. He'd just managed to make himself comfortable when a big blond lummox walked into the room, plopped himself down, and shoved a second spoon into the carton.

"So," an annoyingly high-pitched voice drawled into his ear, scooping a spoonful of vanilla ice cream directly from Cloud's carton and into his own mouth. He grinned and ducked under the irritable swipe that Cloud aimed at him. "Guess what I just saw pull into Zack's driveway?"

"Why bother?" Cloud muttered, glaring at the foreign spoon invading his dearly beloved spoils. "You're going to tell me anyway."

"A moving truck, that's what," Demyx (because of course it was Demyx) continued, un-phased. "And they're unloading. So guess what that means."

Cloud tugged his carton away from the enemy hands pawing at it. "New neighbors."

"You're no fun."

"You're eating my ice cream."

"You and mom share the grocery bill, so it's practically half my ice cream."

"No," Cloud said. "It's practically half her ice cream."

"That's not how cousinly love works," Demyx said, but at that moment another boy walked inside the kitchen, an absent frown over his face, and said, in the distant way one regurgitates old arguments, "Demyx, back away from Cloud's ice cream. Cloud, you forgot the sea salt."

Cloud glanced up, and wondered belatedly whether Roxas timed his entrances to coincide directly with how close Cloud was to launching Demyx into someone else's pool (and therefore, how likely Cloud was to give in to feeding Roxas's sea salt ice cream addiction on the condition that Roxas control his somewhat irrepressible older brother). On the one hand, Roxas wasn't Demyx, and therefore wasn't an idiot masquerading as the patron saint of the vicious (masquerading as an idiot). On the other hand, Roxas _really_ loved sea salt ice cream.

"I'll get you another handful of bars later," Cloud sighed, slouching further into his seat. Then, because if he didn't give in, Demyx would never leave him alone: "Zack's been out of the house for a week. We're not getting new neighbors yet."

Demyx grinned and leaned back in his chair, balancing it precariously on two legs. "Except we are. Which I thought was weird, too, so I went and asked the movers, and they said something about family friends, so I called Zack who passed the phone to Aerith who told me that these Leonharts were friends of hers who'd been shopping for a new home. Serendipity."

"So basically, you spent the last hour gossiping," Roxas said.

"So," Cloud started, ignoring the utensil that went flying over his head at his youngest cousin. "Aerith knows these people?"

Demyx shrugged. "So do you, apparently. Aerith says the wife used to be a friend of yours. Some lady named Tifa."

Cloud, with the gravitas of a monk reading a sutra at a funeral, blinked.

"Tifa," he said. "Lockhart."

"No," Demyx said. "Leonhart."

"No," Cloud said. "Tifa's not married."

"Tifa _wasn't_ married," Demyx says. "Just like once upon a time George Washington wasn't married. Funny how not talking to a person for six years leaves you out of the loop."

"Five years," Cloud said.

"Aerith was very insistent that it was six," Demyx said.

"Aerith can barely remember how old she is," Cloud said. Then he sighed, and dropped his head into a palm. "So Tifa's married?"

"Not just married," Demyx said. "Married with kids."

Cloud set his ice cream down.

"It's supposed to be a pretty weird situation actually," Demyx continued happily. "Apparently they're both adopted, and one of them is actually someone's brother and the other one might possibly be an alien. I don't know, I was too busy listening to Aerith's voice to actually pay attention to what she was saying." He shrugged. "So, yes. Your teenage best friend and possible-once-love interest is married with kids our age, none of which are actually hers. Surprise!"

Cloud processed that for a moment. And then he poured the rest of the ice cream down his throat.

Ignorant of the drama their arrival was causing not fifty meters away, a family of four pulled into a nice, paved driveway, each taking in the surroundings. "Well," Tifa said, with perhaps more satisfaction than the situation entirely deserved. "I think this was a good decision. Wasn't it?"

The three males slowly making their way out of their black van shot each other blank looks. Tifa smiled with just a bit more force than necessary. " _Wasn't_ it?"

"Yes," they all muttered in unison. Tifa smiled again, and outstretched a hand towards Leon. He blinked at her once before nodding, and slipped a hand inside his pocket for the keys. They dropped into Tifa's hand with a quiet jingle, and she ran towards the front door, fumbled it open, and shot inside. Even with twenty feet and plaster separating them, the men could still hear her pleased laughs as she made her way through the rooms.

Outside, Leon shifted his gaze away from the house and onto the huge pile of boxes that littered the driveway. The movers had been paid to cart the freight from Hollow Bastion to Radiant Garden. They had not been paid to unload anything. Hell, they hadn't even been paid to carry the boxes inside. Leon studied them. Then he rolled his arms in their sockets once and shot his two 'sons' a glare. "So. The luggage."

The two boys blinked at him. Leon raised an eyebrow.

"Well?" he said, jerking his head towards the mountain of boxes. "Get to it."

And with that, he swiftly walked (read: ran) inside.

He could hear Riku spluttering behind him.

"Asshole," Riku muttered a good ten minutes later, his forehead already moist with sweat. "I can't believe I didn't see that one coming."

"I must admit I'm a bit surprised at you," Zexion said. He'd taken a seat on one of the larger boxes and was quite busily attempting to calculate how much effort it would take him to not do any work at all . "You've been living with us for three years. I was betting myself that you'd tackle him to the floor."

"Yeah, right. Sure. If you really knew, Zexion, why didn't you stop him?" his younger brother muttered.

Zexion shrugged. "Leon would have escaped at the first available moment," he said idly. "In addition, he probably would not have been much help. More likely, he'd just stand around and offer unwanted advice while we toiled under the blazing summer's day sun." He stood up, satisfied with his estimate, and wondered if he could rig a pulley system to lift up the boxes for him. "Leon can work all day long if he wants to. He just generally doesn't want to. And all the less now that he has two-"

"One."

"-pairs of hands willingly-"

"Hah."

"-working for him." Zexion pushed his bangs out of his face. "What would be the point?"

Riku cursed under his breath and placed a small box atop a larger one and lifting them both to rest against his hip. "I don't care. But if the jackass doesn't at least come by in a few minutes with a glass of lemonade, I swear I will-"

"Hey, guys? You want a glass of lemonade?"

Riku and Zexion both blinked.

Standing before them, sporting the most unruly head of hair either of them had ever seen on a human being outside of a Saturday morning cartoon, and carrying a tray of pastries worthy of any segment on Martha Stewart, was a teenage boy. A widely grinning teenage boy. A widely grinning teenage boy who obviously took their silence as acquiescence and held his metaphorical garden of delights towards the brothers.

To their credit, neither boy leaped at the newcomer in a fit of maddened, ravenous hunger. That would be undignified. Zexion inclined his head slightly and took the glass of lemonade that the boy was offering him with a word of thanks. The boy grinned at him, and then turned to Riku.

"So? You want a glass?" he asked.

Riku took it quietly. His thoughts could be summarized like this:

No. Never mind. It would be impossible to summarize Riku's thoughts under the current rating. Which wasn't to say that they were all unfortunately lewd, of course. They weren't. This is important: Riku saw Sora, and the pit of his stomach folded in on itself, and something snapped into quiet place in his skull. But Riku was also a teenage boy. That makes a summation of thought somewhat perilous to give.

"Yeah," the kid said after a pause, awkward grin somehow growing wider. "Wow, sorry, I just realized how probably weird that was?" He shifted his tray to one arm and held the other out. "Hi. I'm Sora. I live next door. It's _really_ hot outside. Hence the lemonade."

"We're eternally grateful," Zexion said, which meant that he would probably think positive thoughts about Sora for the next two minutes and then forget about him entirely. "I'm Zexion. The idiot standing shell-shocked beside me is Riku. This is very good, thank you."

"Thanks," Sora said, at the same moment that Riku said, "I'm not shell-shocked." Riku frowned, downing the lemonade to give himself a minute to remember how to work his tongue. "Sorry," he said. "I was distracted. There are a lot of boxes."

Sora laughed. "Yeah," he said, setting the tray down. "There's a mountain. I have no idea how-"

And then he and Zexion were talking, and Riku watched him, the words sort of slipping in and out of his ears, and tried to figure out whether the flush creeping up the back of his neck was because he'd been caught staring or because the lines of Sora's calves were godlike and for a weird, homoerotic moment all he could think about was whether or not they'd feel as good as they looked wrapped around him. Probably the latter. They were really very nice calves.

"-gonna have to get down and dirty sooner or later. Do you wanna just get this over with?"

"Yes," Riku said. Then paused. Because: what?

"Great," Sora smiled. "Then I'll just go get them, and I'll be right back."

"We'll stay here and get started with the boxes," Zexion said.

Oh.

Sora nodded and waved a hand over his shoulder, taking off at a sprint towards his house. Riku stared after him, and rather openly, because dude: calves.

The moment Sora retreated out of earshot, Zexion inclined his face minutely towards his younger brother. He raised a thin eyebrow in question.

"Shut up," Riku hissed.

"I didn't say a word."

"You were thinking it."

"You are not telepathic," Zexion said, "and you've thus little idea what I was thinking." And then, just as Riku began thinking that perhaps Zexion would leave it at that: "So I will tell you-"

"Please don't."

"-because it's somewhat embarrassing to be seen within a mile of you when your teenage hormones are writ large upon your face." He snorted quietly. "I cannot believe you actually froze. I'd always assumed that was a purely literary phenomenon."

"Fuck off."

Zexion's mouth twitched. He probably would have said more, but at that moment Sora came walking up the driveway, laughing as he shepherded two blond boys behind him. "Hey," he said. He nodded at a boy who might have been his twin except for the contrast in hair color and a slightly more angular face. "This is my younger brother. Roxas, say hi. And this is Demyx," Sora continued, nodding at the other. "Older brother, sophomore at HBU. No other explanation necessary, what you see is what you get."

"That's a lie," Roxas muttered.

"No, it's not," Demyx said. "I am a blank slate. I'm okay with that."

"Brothers," Sora continued, "Riku and Zexion." He shrugged, nodded to the house. "We can get started if you want?"

Riku turned to Zexion and opened his mouth to respond. And then he closed it.

Riku had known Zexion for three years. That wasn't long enough to learn Zexion. Hell, Leon had known Zexion his whole life and that still hadn't been enough time to learn Zexion. But Zexion also had tells, and right now Zexion's eyes were...it wasn't that they were narrowed, because Zexion was the master of subtlety, and he saved expressions like narrowed eyes for people he'd known long enough to get away with antagonism with. But there was something curious about the expression on his face as he watched the older one (Demyx?). Like the way you looked at someone you might have known years ago, but couldn't quite recall. Or the way you looked at someone when you had indigestion. Knowing Zexion, it could be either/or.

"Poindexter," he said. "Wake up."

Zexion blinked, and slanted his eyes at Riku slowly, face once more a mask. "That would be fine," he said, turning back to the brothers, lips curling into the same bland smile he always used every time he refused to let any other emotion pass across his face. He turned and hoisted a box labeled _study_ into his arms. "Grab anything you'd like."

Sora grinned after Zexion, who was trying not to stumble under the weight of his cargo. "Demyx, go help."

Roxas, who had been standing slightly behind his older brothers and was currently staring after Zexion with an unreadable expression on his face, suddenly spoke up. "Are you sure we should send Demyx with him by himself? I don't know what kind of mess he'd make."

Demyx snorted. "If I make a mess, there'll just be more to clean up," he said, lips twitching with the effort it took not to grin. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the older of their new neighbors. "I can take orders. I'll just listen to whatever he tells me to do."

Roxas grimaced and slid his narrowed eyes over to Zexion. "That's what I'm afraid of."

Demyx appeared not to have heard him, and he bounded after Zexion, picking up a medium-sized crate of books along the way and falling into step behind. Still frowning, Roxas turned around, bent, and heaved a leviathan-sized box into his arms. "Where do I put these?"

Riku jerked his head towards the doorway. "Doesn't matter. Help us cart 'em inside and we'll call it even."

"We don't owe you," Roxas said.

"You're getting the pleasure of my company," Riku said. "That's favor enough."

Roxas looked at him a moment, eyes watchful and eerily blank. Then he headed into the house. Riku made to follow him, but Sora caught hold of his sleeve and pulled him to a halt.

"Hey," he said, somehow managing to look both pleased and shamefaced at the same time. "Sorry. Roxas doesn't really take well to strangers, and he was pretty attached to the guy who lived here before." Sora shrugged. "He's great when he warms up, I promise you. He just needs a while to, you know. Warm up."

Riku reminded himself that calling someone he'd just met a mannerless asshole was probably a bad idea, and managed a responding shrug. "It's fine." He lifted a box onto a shoulder. "I've known you for ten minutes, and you're already company enough."

Sora beamed, grabbed a box of his own, and followed Riku into the house.

"So then I called Aerith and she told me that you'd all be moving in today, even though it had only been a week since Zack moved out? Which could theoretically cause problems with our cousin, by the way-that's Cloud, he's a weirdo and has been platonically involved with Zack since they were like two if you know what I mean and I think you do."

"No," Zexion said. "I don't."

"Friendship," Demyx said knowingly. "And possibly threesomes. Do you play anything?"

Zexion blinked, but whether said nearly-imperceptible motion was a response to the non-sequitur or the fact that Demyx's entire monologue had been said in a single breath, he wasn't sure. "I like chess."

"Yeah," Demyx said, "the only way that answer could have offended me worse is if you'd thought I was referring to sports. I mean instruments."

"I have delicate eardrums," Zexion said.

"If that's a pointed way of telling me to shut up," Demyx said, "I'm going to drop this box on your foot."

"No," Zexion said. "That was a pointed way of telling you that our old neighbors played the bagpipes, and I'm afraid the experience has ruined me for every musical instrument forever."

"There is no way I could have figured that out from _I have delicate eardrums_ ," Demyx said, hoisting the box onto his waist. "You're gonna have to get over it. I'm a magician."

"I think you mean musician."

" _Ars Arcanum_ are musicians," Demyx said. "I am a god."

"The god's about five seconds away from dropping the contents of that box all over his foot," Zexion said.

"No, I'm not," Demyx said, which of course was the moment he dropped the contents of the box all over his foot.

Zexion made a cursory effort not to roll his eyes, wondering what expression his face would finally settle into. He bent, picking up the mountain of books that had just fallen out of the cardboard box, trying to ignore the way Demyx had started caterwauling louder than a dying cat. "Delicate eardrums," he said. "You're fine."

"I'm dying," Demyx said. "I'm gonna sue."

"I recognize that most musicians aren't familiar with books-" Zexion said.

"That's a negative stereotype."

"-but having a handful drop on you isn't going to break a toe," he finished. He stood, hitching his armful of first editions higher for fear they'd drop all over again. "You can stop if you want. You've done quite enough."

Demyx watched him quietly a moment. For the first half of that moment, his face remained frozen in a mask of tremulous offense. And then that mask shifted, and fell, and Demyx smiled, eyes lazy and the curve of his mouth sharp and familiar, like someone Zexion had seen in a dream once, or like the way his own mouth looked in the mirror, on the days he caught a glimpse of himself before he managed to turn his face blank.

"That was definitely a pointed way of telling me to shut up," he said, and then grabbed the books from Zexion's grip and dropped them back into the box.

In the distance, Zexion could hear Sora's happy voice speaking, Riku's lower voice answering, and Roxas's occasional grunt, but those noises weren't important. What was important was the fact that Demyx had just smiled at him the way Zexion smiled at people. That wasn't an expression Zexion often saw cross anyone else's face.

He...disliked that.

Yes. Dislike was the right word.

"Come on," Demyx said. "Show me where to put these so I can go make sure that my brother's not killing yours."

"Which one," Zexion asked, somewhat absently.

"Does it matter?" Demyx said. "Leave either of them alone and soon enough you'll be liable to come back to a house in a nuclear meltdown. Let's go."

He left. Zexion stared after him.

Dislike.

Definitely.

Roxas sighed heavily and aimed a sullen glare at Riku. This was not turning out the way he had expected it to.

When he'd first heard the news of the Leonhart's arrival, he'd expected a few things. Normal things. Nothing extravagant, just a bit of daytime TV-esque inter-familial bonding. The sort of things a teenage boy (who lives on the other side of town from 'most everyone he's on good terms with) dreams about. They would all head over, meet the neighbors, offer them pastries, maybe play a few rounds of Dynasty Souls. Get to know each other. So would Roxas occupy his summer.

Yes, Roxas had had a Plan. It was a good Plan, a fair Plan. The only problem with Roxas's Plan was that there was something wrong with his neighbors and the way they were eying his two older brothers.

Roxas wasn't suspicious. Roxas had flaws; he was aware of that. It was impossible to live in a house with Demyx and not be constantly aware of your own flaws. Roxas was distant sometimes, too emotional at others. He loved his friends, but couldn't always stand to be with them for more than a few hours before the weight of how much he cared about them started suffocating him. He had flaws. Being suspicious wasn't one of them. So, once he acknowledged that, Roxas was left with a hypothesis. A hypothesis that was currently gaining more and more credibility as he realized that, as far as he could tell, Riku's eyes hadn't strayed from Sora since their meeting. It was sort of creepy, actually, when you thought about it. You know, the realization that there existed anyone in the world who wanted to mentally undress Sora-who-still-wore-gummi ship-pajamas.

Beyond that, though-Roxas just didn't like him. There was something about Riku that set his teeth on edge. Once, Roxas probably wouldn't have given credence to instinctual dislike. But that had been before Roxas had met Vinnie, and their mutual hateship had taught Roxas things.

Which brought Roxas to the eldest Leonhart "son."

He shifted his gaze to where Demyx and Zexion were hoisting one large box through the door. Demyx was laughing and talking animatedly, and though Zexion seemed reluctant to speak, something in the way his eyes would periodically be drawn towards the blond, almost confused, seemed veiled with meaning. Roxas frowned.

As far as he could tell, Zexion wasn't mentally stripping Demyx. Not overtly, anyway. But the way that the elder male would shoot furtive glances at his companion, holding them for a few moments longer than necessary, brow furrowed as if he were trying to analyze a complex mathematical equation-or, Roxas amended, a not-so complex mathematical equation, but one that was giving him a lot of shit anyway because he'd forgotten the first step-made Roxas suspicious.

Demyx bumped into a doorframe. The box slipped. Immediately Zexion was shifting slightly, somehow managing to use both gravitational force and the rotation of the earth to execute a tricky maneuver in which he managed to save Demyx's foot from an unfortunate demise by way of a boxful of kitchen knives. Demyx laughed, then winced, then apologized in the way he always did; like he wasn't sorry at all. Zexion looked as if he were aware of that. He also looked as if he didn't much mind.

The ability to handle Demyx said a lot about a person. Few of them were good things.

On the other hand, Zexion also seemed like the sort of person who took a great deal of pleasure in belittling his younger brother at every opportunity, and that was a plus. If Demyx decided he wanted to deal with him, Roxas could deal with him.

Riku, however…

"So, Sora. What are you doing tonight?"

Roxas narrowed his eyes to where Riku was currently squinting at a slip of Sora's exposed abdomen, and frowned.

No, Roxas didn't like Riku at all.


	3. Chapter 2: Oh My!

Disclaimer: I tried to steal Sora. It didn't work out so well.

* * *

 **Chapter Two: Oh My!**

Axel, contrary to popular belief, was not quite the delinquent people made him out to be.

Sure, pyromania was to Axel what stamp-collecting was to old geezers who'd never gotten some. And yeah, playing horseshoes with chakram wasn't exactly an OSHA approved sport. But despite that, Axel was no delinquent, and he'd torch the poor sucker who ever told him otherwise.

"I really don't see how it could have gotten this out of hand," he said, poking at the remains of his lawn chair as it lay forlornly on the once-green (now-not-so-green) grass.

Beside him, two redheads blinked slowly down at the twisted, smoking pile of plastic. "Axel," the youngest began slowly, threading a hand nervously through her hair. "I think Mother said something about combining sharp objects with fire. Something along the lines of 'Oh God, please, no.'"

"Well, yeah," Axel agreed. He shuffled his feet uncomfortably, torn between pride at the stupendous mess he'd made and the beginnings of cruel, agonizing fear curling in the pit of his tummy. "But I didn't figure that the furniture would turn out this…this…"

"Melted, I think, would be an adequate term, yo," Reno interrupted, eyes wide in awe. He kicked the sad mass of plastic with something akin to pity. "Oi. The chairs were green to begin with. How the hell did you turn 'em purple?"

Axel gulped. "You know those chemicals Dad keeps in the basement next to the thumbscrews and the Iron Maiden?"

"Oh no."

"I, ah. Thought it would be funny," Axel laughed weakly.

The three siblings stood there a moment, staring blankly at the depressing remains of what had once been the nicest lawn chairs on the entire block.

"Dad's gonna kill us," Kairi murmured finally.

"Mom's gonna shoot us," Reno said nervously.

"I'm gonna die a virgin," Axel whispered in horror.

Kairi shot him a deadpan look that contained a bit more interest than was probably healthy, and had just opened her mouth to respond when the clicking sound of a gun being cocked sounded behind them, echoing forebodingly across the suddenly freakishly silent neighborhood. The three siblings froze, and hesitantly braved a glance backwards.

A beautiful blonde was reclining against the door frame, waving a pistol around almost haphazardly. Beside her, a handsome middle-aged man with long, jet-black hair glowered at the trio.

An outsider would be hard pressed to find any physical similarities between the quiet couple staring down their three darling children and said darling children themselves, what with all three kids being flaming redheads and the adults in question being anything but. An outsider, in fact, may be tempted to entertain the possibility that these three children were adopted.

This outsider may very well be correct, as no one, the courts included, knew whether or not the Tseng family was actually related by blood. Some people, in fact, wonder whether Tseng Tseng and Elena Tseng are actually married, and not government employees doing some sort of top-secret reconnaissance work in their dinky little neighborhood. After all, what kind of name is Tseng Tseng?

All mysteries and personal suppositions on the nature of the Tseng family aside, however, everyone was in agreement on one thing: they were the craziest assholes this side of Arkham, and no one was quite sure why they hadn't been locked up yet.

This background knowledge serves no purpose except to explain one thing: when one Elena Tseng (such a sweet woman, really, it's a shame about the firearm mania) , began twirling a (pellet? paintball? no one really knew) gun around like one would a baton, her husband scowling beside her, their children could only do one thing.

They gulped.

"Axel," Elena began slowly. There was no trace of a smile on her face. "I do believe your father and I spoke to you about fire, furniture, and the bottles in the basement. Didn't we, dear?" She shot a glance at her husband. "Something about dismembering you slowly if you ever mixed them? Or castration? I think we settled on castration."

The three siblings shot each other terrified glances and took a step back. Kairi, being the only one with a working set of decency, took it upon herself to speak up. "Mom," she began, sidling to the side in a futile effort to shield her older brother from sight. "I don't think Axel meant-"

Elena smiled. Kairi clanked her mouth shut.

"Kairi," Elena said. "Would you mind going to the shop and picking up a pair of crocodile shears? I think I misplaced ours."

Tseng frowned. "Now, now, Elena," he murmured. "It doesn't do to be overzealous. I was thinking something more along the lines of a lifetime of hard labor."

Elena pursed her lips pensively. "You're right. The authorities might make a big deal about a bit of harmless dismemberment. But a lifetime? Surely, a month would be more, ah, befitting our precious baby boy."

Said precious baby boy had the nerve to look relieved for the split second it took Elena to swivel her head around and glare at him. "Don't you dare relax, young man," she whispered, and the corners of her lips tilted up in what was possibly the cutest, most disturbing smile ever seen outside of an anime about schoolgirls and cicadas. "You're cleaning the latrines."

Axel, needless to say, took off running.

"-And then Riku tripped over Roxas's leg and fell down the stairs, and blood was gushing all over the place, everywhere, seriously, it looked like a scene out of that anime about schoolgirls and cicadas, but in the end it turned out he wasn't all that hurt, so we just gave him a band-aid and finished up the rest of the boxes." Sora smiled. "It was fun."

Cloud looked up from his plate of food for the first time since Sora had launched into his speech. "They were nice?"

Sora nodded eagerly. "They're cool. I like them."

Cloud lifted another forkful of chicken to his mouth, chewing slowly, and glanced over the three boys standing in front of him. Sora was grinning. Demyx was drumming some random melody onto the counter. Roxas, on the other hand, was frowning slightly at the floor. The sandwich he was currently squeezing the life out of was dripping yellow jelly onto his sneakers.

"Well," Cloud said. "I guess we can invite them over."

"Golly," Roxas mumbled. "Thanks, Cloud."

"Keep it up, and you're not getting any supper," Cloud said. He let his eyes drift to the window staring directly at the house next door, where two boys were sitting on the porch, locked in some sort of heated debate. "Sora, head over and invite them for dinner. Demyx, go ahead and cook tonight."

Demyx nodded, and the three other boys heaved a sigh in relief. Today had originally been their mother's turn to cook. Feeding her creations to someone outside of the family was generally, however, taken as a declaration of war. Demyx, on the other hand, while not quite a gourmet chef, could at least follow a recipe. That was better than anyone else in their family could do.

"Right," Cloud said. "I'll probably be back by six, so tell them dinner's at seven. Your mother said she'd be working late, but that she might be back in time to eat something, so set a place for her, too." When the boys nodded, Cloud grabbed his keys. "Roxas. Help me at work today."

Roxas raised an eyebrow, but nodded, and followed him out the door. He waited to ask questions until they'd hopped into the truck and were well on their way to Hollow Bastion. Then he sighed, and thumped his head against the window. "What are you delivering today?"

Cloud shrugged, glancing out the rearview mirror. "Cid has me carting auto parts to the shop."

"Riveting."

"It's a job," Cloud said. "That's what matters. Especially now."

"We're not doing that bad," Roxas said.

"No," Cloud says. "But you know better than to turn your nose up at anything that offers you gainful employment. You were raised better than that."

"Yeah," Roxas said. "I know. I'm angry. I'm sorry."

Cloud waited until he knew that Roxas wouldn't continue unprompted before he spoke. "What's wrong with the neighbors?"

Roxas glanced at him, then turned to look back out the window. "No one said anything was wrong with them."

"No one," Cloud agreed. "Which makes it pretty obvious that something is."

Roxas didn't respond immediately. "I'm not overly protective of my brothers," he said at last.

"Yes, you are," Cloud said. "But that has nothing to do with either conversation at hand."

"Yes," Roxas said. "It does."

Cloud switched lanes without flipping his turn signal. Someone behind him started yelling out the window.

"You're saying our neighbors are mooning after the boy wonders."

Roxas shrugged. "I guess."

"That's a statistical improbability."

"You never took statistics."

"I listen to public radio," Cloud said. "You could be overreacting."

"I'm not," Roxas said. "Don't-don't be like that, yeah? Don't make it sound like how much I care about them is going to obscure my ability to see reason."

Cloud didn't mention that sometimes it did. It wouldn't be helpful. More importantly, it wouldn't be very fair.

Roxas sighed, and returned to staring out the window. "The older one's creepy," he said at last. "Polite, but polite in the way Hannibal's polite, which is not at all, because offering you first pick of your own eyeballs isn't that polite in the long run."

"You're saying he's a cannibal."

"I'm not saying he's a cannibal," Roxas said. "I'm saying that Demyx is fucked up, and none of us are ever going to know how to deal with him, and I hate how Sora acts like Demyx is nothing more than the ditz he pretends to be when he's been with Demyx even longer than I have, but this guy shows up and they're the same sort of person and he let Demyx talk all over him and only told him to shut up twice."

Cloud blinked, and resisted the urge to say _only twice?_. "That doesn't mean anything," he said.

"It does."

"You've known each other for an hour, half of which wasn't spent talking," Cloud said. "It doesn't mean anything at all."

Roxas pressed his forehead to the glass. "Yeah. Maybe not."

They were entering the city limits of Hollow Bastion, and with the amount of traffic currently congesting the roadways, he really didn't think that Roxas should be making any loud, sudden noises, or he'd be liable to crash the car into the nearest Piggly Wiggly's. But that was only one brother down. "The other one."

"I didn't like him," Roxas said.

"That doesn't tell me much."

"Yes it does," Roxas said. "I mean I didn't like him. He's not...he's not good for him. He wasn't even-you know how people get with Sora." Cloud did. "Like suddenly everything in the world revolves around him, because he's good and brave and good, yeah? And he deserves it because he's Sora, he's always going to deserve everything. But Riku wasn't like that. He didn't act like he should."

Cloud shifted. "So you're saying you don't like him because he doesn't put your brother on a pedestal."

"No," Roxas said. "They've known each other for an hour. I'm saying I don't like him because I don't think he _would_."

Cloud frowned. When he spoke, it was in the slow, even tones of someone who was carefully choosing each word. "You know that Sora's old enough to make his own decisions."

"That doesn't mean they'll be the right ones."

"It's not up to you to decide that," Cloud said. "He's your brother. It doesn't matter how much you all love each other. He's your brother. He's not you."

Roxas said nothing. Cloud sighed, and then lifted a hand from the steering wheel to fall on Roxas's head.

"The three of you are strong. You're stronger than almost anyone I've ever known. Don't doubt their ability to take care of themselves. You of all people shouldn't worry about that."

Roxas kept his mouth closed for a long moment. "Not worry, huh," he said. And then, quietly, "You're right. I shouldn't worry." He shifted, shrugged. "They'll be okay. It'll all work out, and this stupid thing will fizzle out in a few days, yeah?"

Cloud was quiet for a few moments. "Maybe," he said finally. "I wouldn't worry about it. And even if these kids start getting out of hand..." His mouth curled in a smirk. "You still have your paintball gun, right?"

Roxas grinned.

Tifa beamed at her two adopted sons. She and Leon had spent the afternoon exploring Radiant Garden, peeking into the local shops and sampling restaurant fare (which is to say they headed to the local sports store and ate hamburgers) and generally having a grand old time. It had been a relaxing affair, but neither of them had actually expected their children to tidy up the house in the few hours they'd been gone. Or in the following month.

So when Tifa and Leon pulled into a clean driveway and opened the door to an orderly home, it gives credit to their characters that they didn't burst into grateful tears. They illustrated their pleasure quite clearly by a) grunting a word of thanks and plopping down onto the living room sofa to watch the newly connected television (Leon), b) promising not to force them into housework for the space of two entire days (Tifa), and c) tousling their hair so energetically both boys ducked away and decided never to please them again (oddly enough, Leon. And Tifa).

Riku and Zexion, having come to the unspoken, but mutual, agreement that they would take all credit for the cleaning up of the house, were right about to sidle away and enjoy their two whole days of no-Tifa-ness, when the doorbell rang.

Tifa raised an eyebrow at her husband, who shrugged. And then blinked, because somehow, in the space of the second it had taken him to glance at his wife, his two adopted sons had disappeared down the hallway to the front entrance.

In the brief scuffle (which was not so much a scuffle as it was Riku pushing Zexion out of the way and Zexion using his grip on Riku's neck to shove him to the side) that ensued over the opening rights to the door, Riku lost a chunk of hair and Zexion was brained by his brother's bony elbow. Riku won, but in the moment it took him to smooth his somehow-still-perfect coif, Zexion lurched forward and pulled the door open.

Sora was standing outside, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. He grinned. "Hey," he said. "Sorry about the short notice, but since it's your first day here, we were all wondering if you'd wanna come over and have some dinner. To welcome you to the neighborhood and all."

Riku's grin split his face.

"And your parents are invited too, of course!" Sora added, nodding at the two figures who had just appeared behind the brothers.

There fell the grin.

Tifa smiled at Sora, then glanced at her two sons. "What's this about dinner?"

"Special for new neighbors," Sora said. "Are you Tifa?"

Tifa raised her eyebrows. "Have we met?"

"No," Sora answered. "But Aerith and Zack mentioned you when they told us someone would be moving in. And they also said you knew our cousin."

Tifa frowned and glanced backwards at Leon, who shrugged at her. "Your cousin?"

Sora's smile widened. "My cousin. Cloud Strife."

Tifa froze. "Cloud? Blond, spiky hair, likes turtlenecks too much to be actually healthy?"

"We had an intervention," Sora said.

"I sent him a wedding invitation!"

"Yeah, uh," Sora said. "He doesn't much check his mail."

"I called him for weeks."

"Or answer his phone."

"He was going to be Leon's best man!"

"Zell was my best man," Leon interrupted sullenly. "I've never even met Cloud."

"A disturbing lapse that will be remedied the minute we head next door and I shove my way into his life again," Tifa grinned. She slung an arm around her husband's shoulders. "When's dinner?"

"Seven," Sora smiled. "And we finished putting away all your things earlier so you don't have to worry about being tired or late."

Tifa's smile froze on her mouth. She slanted a glare at her two sons. "You helped?"

"Heh," Sora grinned sheepishly. "It was no problem. Your lazy lugs of sons weren't getting it done by themselves, so me and my brothers decided to come to their rescue."

"Really," Tifa said. Riku and Zexion kissed their two days of freedom goodbye. "They didn't even mention-"

"I'm just gonna give up," Riku muttered.

It took about ten minutes before Tifa finally managed to tear herself away from Sora and flounce back inside, Leon trailing quietly behind her. Sora sighed, then turned his bright grin to both young men standing before him.

"Well," he said. "I'm gonna go back, 'cause if I don't help Roxas and Cloud clean up they'll never let me hear the end of it. I'll see you at seven." And with one final wave, he walked back home.

Five seconds later, Zexion glanced at Riku, who was currently making a valiant attempt not to stare at a certain part of Sora's anatomy that was below the waist and above the thighs. "You're an embarrassment to the name," he said.

"That's funny, coming from you."

"I'm giving you advice," Zexion said. "You have teenage lust all over your face, and you're not even in possession of the self-awareness necessary to realize it. You're going to get into trouble one day, and it'll be wholly your fault."

Riku shrugged, rolled a shoulder back. "I just met him. You're paranoid."

"And you're an idiot," Zexion sighed. "Do not make a mess in your chair."

Seven oh twelve. The Strife home.

All was well. Children were eating, adults were conversing, and life was as it should be.

This, obviously, was a lie.

Let's examine our primary example: Leon, who was currently twitching quite un-aesthetically in his seat at the dinner table, feeling as if his entire world had just been shaken to the core.

Let's examine that.

Leon had always been a reasonable man. Logical, as it were. He'd always known where he wanted to go in life, and had done his level best to get there. Sure, every now and then fate threw him a curve ball the size of a blimp, but all in all Squall 'Leon' Leonhart was a man in charge of his own destiny.

Or so he thought, anyway. But sometimes those curve balls weren't so much balls as they were dinosaur-sized asteroids ready to level the world as he knew it.

Leon had never been good with infatuation. Had never known how to navigate himself around attraction when it was already hard enough to make himself talk around people he didn't know. That had been true seven years ago, and remained true now. If it hadn't been, perhaps he would have actually have been able to assign the name Cloud Strife to a face.

Five steps into the Strife household, Tifa had gasped in glee and launched herself at a stocky blond, enveloping him in her arms. Five steps into the household, said blond had smiled and caught Tifa in a crushing hug. Five steps into the household, Leon had recognized that face, and realized he was doomed.

The worst part of it, of course, was that Tifa likely knew.

At Leon's prolonged silence, Tifa had detached herself from her estranged best friend's neck and had made their introductions. And then she'd frozen. Had glanced from Leon to Cloud. Had frowned, bitten her lip, and excused herself to the bathroom.

Five awkward minutes later (where the entire conversation between Leon and Cloud could be summed up like this: ' _So_ ,' ' _Uh_ ,' and ' _How's married life treating you?_ ') she had returned from the bathroom with a steely glint in her eye and a small smile on face. And just like that, Leon was hit with the mad desire to run back to their house, whereupon he would then find sanctuary in their large walk-in closet (there was a pun in there, somewhere. Leon considered himself too mature to make it) and never come back out.

So now the Leonhart family was seated at the Strife table, and he was the only one not speaking. Oh, to be fair, Zexion was more interested in listening to (frowning at?) the tall annoying one-what was his name? Zemyx?-than speaking himself, but he was still talking. Riku and that Sora boy were talking animatedly, with the occasional remark from Roxas.

And Tifa? Tifa was happily chatting with a childhood friend while shooting her husband furtive glances every twelve seconds. And in the middle of that:

"So, Leon," she said. "Cloud insists he never ran into you at HBU. Isn't that odd? After all, I met you my freshman year; I'm sure you must have seen each other at some point in time."

"I can't remember," Leon said.

"I doubt it," Cloud said. "We're younger. And I was working."

"You did too much of that," Tifa said.

"Not really," Cloud said. "But I would have met him if I'd known you were dating."

Tifa smiled. "We weren't; I just knew who he was because Yuffie introduced us. It wasn't really until senior year that-"

"Shit!"

Every head around the dinner table swiveled toward the sound of the voice. Riku had shot out of his chair and was clutching one foot to himself while aiming a black glower across the table at Roxas. "What the hell was that!?"

"Sorry," Roxas said. "My leg twitched."

"Twitched?" Riku said. "You almost dislocated my kneecap!"

Roxas narrowed his eyes so fearsomely Sora began wondering if there were any possible way he could conceivably take cover under his serviette. "Sometimes kneecaps deserve dislocation," Roxas said in a low voice that still somehow managed to carry across the kitchen and through the closed door, where it proceeded to throw Vinnie the chocobo into a sympathetic fit. "Especially when said kneecaps are-"

"I was stretching," Riku said.

"Is that what you call it where you come from?"

"I don't even know what you're all arguing about," Sora said.

"Who cooked?" Zexion interrupted.

Demyx lifted his head from where it had been slumped along the table. He swallowed his mouthful of pasta and nodded. "I did."

Something in Zexion's face rippled oddly. "It's good," he said. "You did very well."

Cloud tugged the butter knife away from Roxas, aiming an apologetic glance at a vaguely dumbstruck Tifa. "It's all right," he said. "This is normal."

From his seat across the table, Leon groaned and resisted the urge to slam his head repeatedly into his dinner plate.

He had the strange, deep, unsettling feeling that his carefully ordered life was right about to come crashing down around his ears. And he was pretty sure he wasn't going to like it one bit.

In a quiet, dark, sinister house, the tiny screen of a cell phone lit.

Desperately, a shadowed figure fumbled with the appliance. The cell slipped against the sweat on his hands. Finally, he managed to find the talk button.

"'Lo?" he whispered.

"Axel," A tinny voice shouted, the sound warped through the speaker. "I need you to do me a favor."

Axel slid his body down the wall and began crawling towards the kitchen counter. "Fuck, Riku," he whispered. He glanced through the dark hallways in sheer paranoia. "Not now. I'm in a bit of trouble."

"You burned the house down, didn't you?"

Axel winced. "I didn't burn the house, idiot. If I had I'd have already run away to Canada." The floor creak slightly, and he flinched. "But I, like, melted Mom's new lawn furniture, so now we're having a prolonged session of survival practice. I haven't been able to sleep all night."

Riku's sympathetic flinch was almost audible. "Sorry, man. But hey, all you've gotta do is last 'til morning, right? And then she'll leave you alone?"

The floor creaked again, louder this time. "It's only one!" Axel hissed. "I'll never make it!"

"Well yeah, but she'd never actually kill you, right?"

Axel scowled at the display screen and scratched his head. "Last month? Reno broke a vase with his club, and Mom lopped off his ponytail. The first thing she said was 'damn, I missed.'" He resisted the urge to swear profusely, and at the top of his lungs. "I don't think she'd actually go past telling me how disappointed she is, though. Anything else would be too suspicious."

Riku released a tired sigh. "Well, shit. You'll be okay. But I still need a favor."

"Fine," Axel muttered. "What."

A pregnant pause. Then: "Well. You know we just moved to Radiant Garden, right?"

Axel straightened slightly and grinned for the first time since he'd set fire to Elena's precious overpriced lawn decorations masquerading as chairs. "Yeah. Shit, you're just a five minute drive away from us, now. "

A few miles away, Riku leaned lazily back in bed. He smirked. "Well, we've got new neighbors," he continued, drawing the words out with the air of one about to reveal a juicy secret. "Interesting neighbors. And there's one in particular I'd like you to meet…"

Ten minutes later, Axel hung up the phone and leaned back, satisfied. His conversation with Riku had certainly been noteworthy. Hell, if this panned out the way he thought it would, life would definitely be getting more interesting.

With a muted sigh, he peeked around the kitchen counter-

-and came face to face with a decidedly deadly smile, wielded by a decidedly deadlier woman.

"Hello, Axel darling," Elena smiled. "Is this where you've been hiding?"

And for the first time in his admittedly short life, Axel fell to his knees and begged for mercy.


	4. Chapter 3: Bite Me!

**Chapter Three: Bite Me**

Some people believe that women can be rather frightening. They are-according to widespread (if horrible and misogynistic) belief-heartless, manipulative, and willing to use whatever means in order to achieve their ends. Of course, widespread, horribly misogynistic belief is for suckers. Girls are human beings, and are therefore just as likely to be complex and capable of character variation, both positive and negative, as anyone else. Some people are terrifying! Others are not. And still others can be terrifying, but only in certain situations, because most human beings don't conform to a single character archetype 24/7, geez, what do you think real life is?

Tifa Leonhart was no exception to this rule.

So when Tifa dragged her husband into the living room after breakfast, evicted her two adopted children from their perches on the couch, and bodily threw her husband onto the loveseat, Leon was only a little bit humiliated that he subsequently broke into a full-body sweat.

"Kids," Tifa said. "Your father and I have some very important things to discuss. So could you two be utter dolls and go and amuse yourself outside?"

Riku had already opened his mouth to protest out of sheer habit when she shot him a Look. (For the record, the capitalization is both fully intended and wholly necessary. Anything can be a look. It takes true murderous intent, however, for a look to be a Look. Look into a mirror. What you've just given yourself is a look. Now, look into the mirror while picturing your Calculus teacher refusing to give you credit for that last problem set just because you maybe mixed up derivatives and integrals. That, friends, is a Look.) The point of the matter is, what Riku had just found himself on the receiving end of was a Look. To be perfectly precise, it was a _Get your ass outside or I'll shave your eyebrows off while you sleep_ Look. There are, of course, implications lost in the translation, but it's close enough.

As soon as the front door swung shut on its hinges, Tifa turned towards Leon. And smiled in a manner that reminded her husband painfully of a black widow right after she finished shagging her latest boy toy.

"Leon," she said, pushing him to the side and plopping herself down next to him. "Leon, is there something you want to tell me?"

Silence.

"Now, Leon," Tifa continued. "You know that you can come to me with anything. Absolutely anything. Because that's what partners are for, right? So, are you going to tell me?"

Leon kept his mouth firmly closed.

"All right," she said. "You leave me no choice."

She smiled. It wasn't a pleasant look.

"You and I are going to discuss our feelings."

Leon came to the retrospective conclusion that he should have opened his damn mouth.

Riku slouched down on his front porch, lazily scrolling past the first few names in his phonebook until he found the one he was searching for. Then he let the phone ring.

And ring.

And ring.

Two minutes later, Riku glanced over at his older brother and swallowed. "I think my best friend's dead."

Zexion raised an eyebrow delicately and continued cataloging each cloud in the sky by type. "He lit his chakram on fire and burned the house down, didn't he?"

Riku snorted. "What kind of stupid suggestion was that? Nah, he just melted the lawn furniture."

"Ah. Then Mrs. Elena will probably be rather upset today."

Riku mumbled something under his breath, and stared down at his phone. He was about to hang up when the phone clicked, and a voice finally echoed through the tiny speakers.

"H-hello?"

Riku slumped slightly in relief. "Hey. I thought for a second your parents had actually killed you this time." At the small noise that sounded, he raised his eyebrows curiously. "Dude. Are you crying?"

A muffled moan was his only answer. Riku trudged bravely onwards.

"Anyway, remember what we talked about last night? Think you can come over?"

Axel sniffled, but answered. "Yeah, sure. I'll be over there in five." He winced. "Or ten. Mom's got me wiping off the front window. Again. I apparently didn't do a good job the first time. Or the second. Or the-"

"Eh, right. So, you'll be over soon, I guess. Okay. We'll see you then." Riku slammed the phone shut, and heaved a sigh. Zexion shot him a glance from the corner of his eye.

"It's times like these that really make you appreciate Mother, hm?" Zexion asked. Riku groaned in response.

Cloud parked his truck in the lot adjacent to Cid's Auto Shop and shoved open the front door. He sighed in frustration. Last night had been...difficult. Yes. In lieu of _complete and utter failure, difficult_ was probably the safest word to use.

Cloud wasn't sure who exactly had started the feud between Roxas and the youngest Leonhart. All he knew was that 1) the two boys loathed each other with the all the intensity of two pro-wrestling fans on opposite sides of the ring, 2) somehow, some way, Sora was stuck in the middle, and 3) he was too old for this.

He shouldered the boxes of auto parts and stumbled his way down the sidewalk and into the shop. Inside, a stocky middle-aged man stood waving his arms around angrily, shouting into his cell phone around the cigarette he was simultaneously smoking and chewing.

"Cid," Cloud said.

The man made a rude gesture and waved him to the side. Cloud nodded, hefting the boxes onto the floor and taking a seat on one of the stiff, plastic chairs Cid had lined against the wall.

"Now, you listen here," Cid roared. "When I asked for a larger shipment, I meant a substantially larger shipment. I didn't mean one additional package half the size of the rest!"

The voice on the other end spoke. Cid growled.

"No, dammit, I don't care if the credit card was maxed out. If I want a larger shipment, then I will get the goddamn shipment! Charge it to my bank account! I know you can do it, so I want it done, and I want it done now!"

Another pause. Cid turned red.

"I've got shit to take care of and nothing to do it with! I will have those diapers and I will have them if I have to drive over there and rip them from your twiggy, miserly arms! So ship 'em, dick!"

With a final howl, Cid hung up the phone and began taking deep breaths. Cloud stared impassively at him. "I've brought the parts over," he said, carefully avoiding Cid's eyes for fear of (Heaven forbid) grinning. "Do you have anything else for me?"

Cid groaned and plopped down onto his chair. "You just got here and you're putting me to work already?" At Cloud's quirk of the lips, he rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. We just signed this contract with some big-shot electric company. Shinra, or something like that. They've got a branch based in mechanics that we now have a direct liaison with. I'll give you the address for the company-here, lemme just..." He dived into the mountain of crumbled papers on the desk and fished around for a minute, sending half the content of the desk flying. Finally, he found what he was looking for and flattened the paper out before handing it to Cloud.

"It's far," Cloud muttered, frowning at the address.

"It's your fucking job, kid."

Cloud rolled his eyes and shrugged. He was halfway out the door before he paused. He turned around, something that almost resembled a smile pulling up his lips.

"The baby's a bit more trouble than her brothers were, huh?"

Cid groaned again and let his head drop into his hands. "Fuck, you have no idea. I got home from work yesterday, tired as shit and ready to just fall into bed. I thought, hey, Tidus and Hayner are supposed to be taking care of her, I can just take a nap before Sherra comes home from the hospital, right? The second I get home I see 'em running around the yard like chocobos with their heads cut off. Somehow, Rikku crawled over the safety gate, out of the kitchen window, and up the ladder, where she jumped onto the trampoline and catapulted onto the roof."

"The roof?"

"The roof," Cid grumbled. "Brat's two years old. I don't know how she did it. She's like that kid from _The Incredibles_."

Cloud muffled a quiet laugh and shook his head, once more heading towards the door. He nodded in farewell and placed a hand on the knob, before he paused once more. "You forgot to write down the name of the company."

Cid frowned and leaned back on his chair. "Oh, yeah, sorry about that." He rifled through the stack of papers lying littered across his desk, then picked one up. "Here it is. Uh, JBT. Jenova BioTech."

Cloud froze.

"Jenova?" he asked, quiet. "Is that what you just said?"

Cid shrugged and crossed his arms. "Yeah. Why? Is there a problem with that?"

Tifa hadn't spoken yet.

In all honestly, Leon wasn't sure he wanted her to. This wasn't a conversation he wanted to have. This wasn't a conversation he wanted to have ever. He'd married Tifa for a reason. It had been a good one. It didn't make him happy that she was questioning that now.

"So," she said at last. "Feelings."

"I'm gonna leave," he threatened.

"Don't be a jerk," she said. "You were eyeing my childhood friend. I am entitled to a discussion about my feelings."

"Yours aren't the ones I'm worried about discussing," Leon muttered.

"Too bad," Tifa said. "'Cause you know what conversation we're about to have."

Leon did.

Tifa studied him quietly for a long moment. Then she sighed.

"You know I'm not going to do this," she said.

Leon kept his face as blank as he could. "I'm not asking you to."

"No," she said. "I mean that I'm not going to do this."

"And I mean that I am not going to ask you to," Leon repeated. "We'll move back if we have to. I'm not going to put any of you through this."

"Don't be an idiot," Tifa said, no trace of levity on her face now. "We're not moving. That's not even up for debate."

Leon kept silent. Tifa sighed, and leaned back onto the couch.

"We promised," she said. "The both of us promised."

"Don't do that," Leon said.

"I'm not saying anything we didn't say before we got married."

"We promised we'd separate if we ever fell in love," Leon said. "I'm not in love."

"I didn't say you were," Tifa said. "But you're something."

"I met him yesterday."

"No, you didn't," Tifa said. "You've known him longer. How well, I can't say, given that you didn't react to his name. But you met him somewhere before. I could see it on your face."

Leon said nothing. Truth be told, he didn't much know what he should say.

"Cloud is my friend," Tifa said at length. "Was my- _is_ my friend. I've known him for years. I was his date for prom, I was the first girl he ever kissed, and no matter how many times I ever made him cry, he was always there to take the blame upon himself. Because Cloud may be a quiet and stubborn and a pretty big jerk, but he's the sweetest man you'll ever find, and the army of friends and admirers that he's got trailing after him is proof of that." She took a breath. "That's what he is to me. I don't know what he is to you."

Leon tipped his head back. "He's nothing," he said. "He just someone who used to drive by on the way to work."

"Must have been some driver," Tifa said.

It took a few minutes before either one of them spoke again. When one of them did, it was Leon.

"I'm happy. You know that, right?"

"I know you are," Tifa said. "You love us. If it were a matter of simply being content, I would have left you years ago. But we're happy. This works. For better or for worse, it's always worked."

"I married you for a reason."

"You married me for more than one reason," Tifa said. "Being in love might not have been one of them, but we married each other for many reasons, and they were all good ones."

"I don't like this," Leon said. "I don't like you acting like me looking at someone is going to end our marriage. There's more to this than just the both of us. There's a lot more than someone I don't even know."

"Leon," Tifa said. "I know. But this is the first time you ever _have_ looked at a person. What that's going to mean in the next few months is anyone's guess. But this isn't something that you normally do. There's no better time to have this conversation than now."

"It's not going to change anything."

"Probably not," Tifa said. "We've both put too much work into this relationship to throw it away easily. But if we don't talk about this now, we're not going to talk about it later, and maybe it doesn't happen now, maybe it doesn't happen ever, but if it ever does happen I want to know it's happening. I'll let you go if I have to, just like you'd do the same for me. But I want to know where you stand. I'm not going to spend the next year floundering just because you're emotionally repressed and don't know how to deal with being reunited with someone you only ever saw 'drive by.'"

Leon shifted in his seat and tilted his head backwards to stare at the ceiling. He shrugged, but the calm in the movement was belied by the way the cords in his neck tensed and quivered in something that might have been anger, but was not.

"You wanted Zexion to have a mother," Tifa said. "I wanted to be a mother. We were friends. We were soul mates. Marrying each other was the right decision. And I'm not leaving now. I don't care what happens in the future, I'm not ever going to leave the three of you. Even if I have to step aside for someone else, I'm not going to leave any of you. We can add someone to the family. You know that."

The ceiling gave no hint as to what the appropriate response would be. Leon settled on, "I know."

"And we're not going to throw this away based on a single dinner," Tifa continued. "Especially not one as stilted as that."

"I'm going to kill Riku," Leon said.

"But I want you to know," Tifa said. "That I'd step aside if you needed me to. I won't leave. We're family. We're friends. But I'd do it. I'll take the house, sure, but I'd do it."

"I thought you said you wouldn't leave," Leon muttered.

"I wouldn't," Tifa said. "I'd pitch you a tent."

"It's nice to know I can count on your charity," Leon said. Then he sighed, and let his head droop, just slightly, onto his hands. "I don't like this," he said.

Arms wrapped around his shoulders. Warm breath whispered across his ears. "Of course you don't," she answered. "You've never had much use for anything that makes you feel."

"Don't say that when I can hear you're trying not to cry," Leon said. "It makes it worse."

"We've been married for years," she laughed lightly. "That means something."

"Yeah," Leon said. "I guess so."

They settled against each other on the couch, legs twisted together, strands of brown hair twisted even further. It was a moment before either of them spoke. When Leon finally did, it was with an odd measure of finality in the words."So," he said, letting his hands pet her hair softly. "What are we going to do now?"

Tifa grinned, her mouth opening in a wide yawn. "You think if we could start dividing up marital assets without telling the kids?"

A wall away, Riku and Zexion sneezed.

"Shit," Riku muttered, rubbing at his nose. "The pollen here is ridiculous."

"I thought you weren't allergic."

Riku opened his mouth to respond when he was suddenly shocked into silence. And by shocked into silence, I mean that he found himself unable to formulate a reply through the mouthful of mud dripping down his chin.

"Sorry, kid," Axel said, not sounding sorry at all. He swung a leg over his motorcycle and hopped onto the moist ground. "I almost drove past the house and I had to make a quick stop."

Riku aimed a ball of mud-spit at Axel's hair.

"So," Axel continued, dusting himself off. "Where's Blondie?"

Zexion raised an eyebrow and frowned, his calm face going slightly tense around the edges. "You wouldn't be referring to the boy next door."

"Depends," Riku said. "Which one do you mean?"

"The one who almost dislocated your kneecap."

"Then yeah," Riku said. "You're right."

Zexion's face went devoid of expression for a moment, his eyebrows drawing just slightly. Then, he tossed his head back and glowered down his nose at the pair of them.

"Let me see if I understand this correctly," he said slowly, making no secret of the fact that he definitely had understood correctly, and was only making the pretense of uncertainty for dramatic effect. "Yesterday, we moved into this house. Not one hour later, we met our next-door neighbors. You are openly infatuated with one, but his younger brother is currently hindering your plans for seduction. Now, in a clearly misguided attempt to remove this impediment from your errant way, you have enlisted the help of the local delinquent-" Axel grinned. "-to provide a distraction while you continue in your pursuit of the young Sora Strife. You are, of course, basing your entire plan on the assumption that the very protective, seemingly intelligent Roxas will fall in love with our resident felon, despite the fact that the only one who would fall in love with Axel is, and I mean no offense-" Zexion meant _so much offense_ "-Axel. Once his attentions have been placed elsewhere, he will completely forget about your obvious and somewhat embarrassing attraction towards his older brother, which will leave the path towards one Sora Strife blessedly clear."

Riku nodded, pleased with himself. "Yeah. Isn't it great?"

Zexion opened his mouth to explain, in no small amount of detail, why it really wasn't that great. But at that moment someone called their names.

Demyx and Sora were walking towards them, wearing matching grins. They waved once, and came to a stop.

"Hey," Sora said. "What's up?"

While Riku tossed his head back and did everything in his power to make himself look cool, Axel took the opportunity to look the pair of them over. The short brunet was obviously Sora; Riku had been quite adamant that Axel go nowhere near anyone with brown hair. The taller one probably wasn't Roxas, either. He was supposed to be the youngest. So…if the two eldest Strife brothers were standing before them, where was Roxas?

"Oh. It's you."

Axel jerked his head up.

A short blond was walking warily towards them, trailing behind his two brothers. He was slim, with hair almost as wild as Sora's (though his at least looked purposefully styled to look like a bird's nest, as opposed to naturally like that), and wearing baggy, two-toned pants. His face was serious, and his eyes were narrowed slightly in something a bit too calm to be suspicion, but sharp enough to be unfriendly.

"Hey, Zexion," he said finally, nodding at the older male. He shot Riku an apathetic glance. Then he turned toward the friend.

For a single split second, Roxas looked at Axel the way you looked at an unexpected, not-altogether-unpleasant surprise.

"Hey," Riku said, glaring at Roxas as if he were a wad of half-chewed gum stuck to the bottom of his brand new two hundred munny shoes. He finally tore his vitriol-laced gaze away, and jerked his head towards Axel. "This is my best friend."

The expression on Roxas's face, very abruptly, fell.

Axel took a brief moment to wonder whether it would have been better to present himself as Riku's archenemy, thought _haha naw,_ and grinned. "The name," he said lazily, "is Axel. A-X-E-L. Got it memorized?"

Sora stared. Demyx coughed. Roxas's glare single-handedly reversed global warming.

Zexion cleared his throat delicately, quietly dispelling the awkward silence that had befallen the group in the wake of Axel assuming everyone in the world thought 'got it memorized' was both witty and debonair. "Leon and Tifa suggested we explore Radiant Garden," he said. "Since we're new. You three know this place better than we do. Do you think you could be persuaded to escort us?"

Axel and Riku glanced at each other. Roxas stared at them, eyes narrowed, and attached himself to Sora's arm.

Demyx winced at their retreating backs. "Is it just me, or does this not seem like the best idea in the world?"

Zexion allowed himself a sigh, and shrugged.

"Don't worry so much about them," Zexion said, turning to walk in the opposite direction and motioning for Demyx to follow him. "They all seem reasonably intelligent. I'm sure they'll be fine."

Two twisted pinkies, three purple nurples, one torn t-shirt, and the bruised ego of every party involved later:

"Riku, if you don't remove your hand from Sora's waist this instant, I will remove your hand from _you_."

"Roxas, you're overreacting. Again."

"Sora, you tripped over his foot. Again."

"I really hope you're not implying that I'm purposely tripping your brother just so I can cop a feel."

"I'm implying nothing, dickhead. I'm telling you outright that if your hand strays one centimeter downward, you will very quickly find yourself writing in base nine."

Axel sighed. "No one's trying to grope anyone. Cool down. I'll treat you to ice cream."

Roxas's face turned so many colors Axel was reminded agonizingly of a disco light. Somewhere around purple, Roxas spoke. "You're his friend," he began, fingers lifting to illustrate each point with all the careful deliberation of a mad axe man deciding which hatchet to use today. "So I understand if you're a bit biased in his favor. But I am going to ask this seriously: are you actually suggesting that I abandon my brother to the whims of a pervert who, knowing nothing about him, has still, in broad daylight, spent the last hour trying to _get into his pants?_ "

This was a slight exaggeration. Riku was not actually trying to get into Sora's pants. Riku wasn't even trying to trip him in order to cop a feel, which, let's be honest here, would be a pretty shitty thing to do. This wasn't to say that Riku didn't really enjoy the contact, of course, because he did, and was bad at making a secret of it (which Roxas obviously picked up on). But it wasn't purposeful.

Roxas didn't know that. Roxas only saw the appreciation and made what was, to be fair, a reasonably logical assumption.

Something else he didn't know: his mutual antipathy with Vincent the Chocobo had left Vinnie with the unfortunate ability to sense Roxas's voice patterns (particularly when angry) from long distances. Vinnie liked antagonizing him, see.

Roxas was very angry, and his voice had gone very loud, and, in their vague meandering around the neighborhood, weren't actually all that far away from their house. So Vinnie heard. And Vinnie knew.

Remember this. It's important later.

The echoes of Roxas's half-shout faded into the air. Sora stood there, eyes narrowed.

"Roxas," Sora said slowly. "You really have to stop."

Roxas met his brother glare for glare, but said nothing. He turned to walk away. And then he stumbled.

The following events were ones that would not seem out of place in a 2-star slapstick comedy. Maybe Lady Luck and Mistress Fate were having a tea party and suddenly decided _Hey, we haven't screwed anyone over totally in the past week_ ; _might as well have some fun with these morons_! Maybe the universe decided to slap the Strife and Leonhart families for some imagined transgression that may or may not have had to do with teenage hormones and wandering hands. Or maybe serendipity fell in love with destiny and the end result was one straight out of a cheesy B-rate movie. Either way, if Axel could have possibly foreseen the repercussions of his actions, maybe he'd have let Roxas's brains squelch onto the pavement. Or not.

Vinnie the Chocobo, having leapt gracefully from his roost at the summit of Strife Mountain, had wandered down the street. A good minute later, he paused to gauge his bearings, and then narrowly stared up at four figures who were conversing loudly in the middle of the road. He zeroed in on Roxas. He came up with a plan.

Vincent set himself down at Roxas's heels.

And Roxas spun around, took a step, and tripped over him.

In an effort to catch his future love-interest before he met an untimely end on the sticky pavement and squashed any prospective hopes of a two-story home with a white picket fence and 2.5 kids, Axel tried to reach him. He didn't. He did, however, manage to trip over Vinnie as well, and go smashing right into Riku. Guess what happened then.

Some time later, Roxas managed to extricate himself from the pile of limbs he found himself tangled in. He groaned, and rubbed his head.

"Who's sitting on me?" he muttered, pushing against the arm lying on his tummy. He sat up, cradling his temple, and looked around blearily.

"Sora, you oka-"

And then he stopped.

A few feet away, Sora winced and sat up painfully. Or tried to, anyway. Because, as everyone knows, a lapful of Riku will put a definite damper on all thoughts of sitting up-ness. And a crotchful of Riku will do a hell of a lot more.

Their eyes met.

And then two near-identical voices screamed an identical message in absolute rage.

"Riku, you asshole! This means war!"

Demyx grinned at Zexion and offered him a spoonful of his slushie. "Am I ever glad we decided to ditch the brats. This was a lot more fun than it would have been with those four arguing over everything."

Zexion's frown was uncharacteristically wide as he accepted the spoon. He squinted at it, wondering if he could get away with dropping it "accidentally _."_ Then wondering why he was only _mostly_ (instead of entirely) disgusted by the thought of sharing germs. He lifted it to his mouth. It tasted like cherry and high self esteem. "Yes," he said, after a pause. "It was nice."

Demyx beamed at him. Then something caught his eye, and he sighed. "Okay," he said, pointing at a line of posters dotting the long wooden fence that lined the pier. "If I have to see one more poster about _Ars'_ stupid sold-out concert, I will commit a crime."

Zexion looked at him. And then, just internally, he smiled.


	5. Chapter 4: Cluck You!

**Chapter Four: Cluck You!**

Demyx had a lot to be upset about. Of course, to be fair, Demyx was an older brother with two younger siblings, so being upset was practically a way of life. He was a seasoned pro.

However, this version of upset wasn't the typical "Oh my God, Mom's gonna kill me and use my femurs for toothpicks" upset Demyx felt on a daily basis. That version of upset was natural. Demyx was a growing boy, after all, and the trouble he landed himself in was almost expected. The trio of brothers would run, jump, and splatter, and Demyx would take the blame like the good older brother he was.

This version of upset, though…

"Our retaliation must be swift. And ironic. Yes. This, brothers, will be cruelly ironic. I will laugh."

Roxas leaned back in his desk chair, eyes narrowed and mouth stretched in a grin that was not so much manic as it was freakishly calm, and made all the more terrifying by how un-manic it was. "We're going to slaughter them," he said happily. "It's gonna be great."

This version of upset would most likely kill him.

"Roxas," Demyx began slowly. Afraid was an understatement. Demyx was shaking in his silk undies. "Don't you think you're maybe overreacting? Just a bit?"

His brothers shot him twin, feral glares.

"Overreacting? That horrible dickish no-good-"

"I don't think it's really your place to say I'm overreacting?" Sora said. "I mean, I know that you're a little more free with your physical affections than I am, but that doesn't mean you can't understand how upsetting it is to be bowled over by someone who then proceeds to fall into your lap and-"

"-falls down a hole and dies like the fish he is-"

"-I thought he was being nice," Sora continued, somewhat miserably. "I thought he was being friendly."

"-well, I'll show him lemmings, that filthy-"

"-stupid-"

"-piece of-"

"STOP!"

Two heads swiveled on their respective necks to look at Demyx.

"Look," he said, sounding about as angry as a person could be while also shooting nervous glances at the window and twitching spasmodically. "I know that the two of you are angry about this. So am I. Sure, I kind of think it was an accident, but that doesn't mean you don't have the right to be upset. So yeah," he said hurriedly, shooting an awkward glance at Roxas, who was staring at him unblinkingly. "Yeah, I can sorta see your standpoint about this whole thing. About the revenge, I mean. But a possibly imagined transgression is no reason to call down the wrath of the Strife family upon our neighbors, the majority of whom have done nothing wrong! Think of Zexion."

"Zexion's upsetting," Roxas said.

"It's really unfair to make that kind of judgment based on only a handful of meetings," Demyx said. "And anyway, you've repeatedly told me that so am I, so-"

"We're not gonna punish the whole family," Sora interrupted. "That would be letting revenge outweigh justice."

"Exactly!" Demyx answered. "I know that you're both upset right now. To think that he somehow coerced poor Vinnie into tripping you all just so he could land in your lap! If that doesn't deserve a healthy dose of ass-kicking, I don't know what does! But really, this would take too much effort. It would definitely be better if you-"

"I said we're not gonna punish the whole family," Sora said. "I didn't say anything about Riku."

Demyx cast another glance at the window, and sighed.

"We'll spare Tifa and Leon," Roxas said. "And since you so graciously pleaded Zexion's case, I will grant him clemency." Demyx dropped his head into his hands. Roxas ignored him and continued. "But Riku's fall will be horrible. Macabre. Bloody, if I can manage it." He frowned and collapsed onto the desk chair. "We should begin by sending a message. A _stay away from our family, jerk-off_ message. But how?"

The thing about Roxas is that normally, he was fairly easygoing. A bit quiet, but with a decent sense of humor and a kind heart. When he latched onto an idea, however…

Demyx sighed and leaned back in his seat. There'd be no way he'd be able to keep them out of trouble this time. Oh well.

"I dunno, Roxas," Sora said thoughtfully. "But whatever we do, I don't think it's gonna be today. Riku's going to Hollow Bastion today to pick up their dogs."

"Dogs?"

"Yeah," Sora said, oblivious to Roxas's internal turmoil. "They've got, like, a hundred and one Dalmatians or something."

Roxas sat up so fast he cracked his back. "Dalmatians?"

Sora nodded slowly. "Yeah. Why?"

Cloud let his head fall onto the steering wheel of his truck, and breathed.

He was nervous. Not that he'd ever admit it, of course; Cloud was stoic. Cloud was independent. More importantly, Cloud didn't actually care about himself enough to regularly get nervous. But now, Cloud was nervous, and it wasn't even the funny type of nervous he might one day be able to chuckle sheepishly over. Hell, you could probably almost call it fear.

Cloud was, quite frankly, absolutely fucking petrified, and he had yet to step out of his truck.

"All right," he muttered to himself. He tilted his head back against the seat, tugging a spiky lock of hair out of his face. "This isn't so bad. Look. You're already here and you haven't broken out in cold sweat yet. Good job, Cloud."

He took a deep breath, then bashed his head against the dashboard. "Fuck," he whispered. "Fuck."

He kicked the front door of the truck open, and hopped out, trudging over the bed of the truck and hoisting the foldable cart he always carried there to the floor. Quickly, he began unloading the boxes out of the bed and onto the cart. "Don't worry about it," he muttered, carting the load of boxes into the open garage of Jenova BioTech. "Not like you're gonna meet him here. Just because the place is called Jenova doesn't mean that you're going to meet him here." He kicked at the ground angrily, sending pebbles flying. "Fucking wish I could meet him here. I'd kill him. Fucking…"

On the opposite side of the entrance, a rabbity looking young man stood holding a notepad and a large pocket watch. He wheeled the cart over, and nodded slowly.

"Hey. Highwind sent me over. Where do you want me to-"

"Over to the right, please, you'll see the dock right under the sign. Hurry up, hurry, don't want to be late!"

Cloud raised an eyebrow. "Sure," he said, and headed to the right. A few hundred yards away, a team of young men in red and black worked quickly, unloading cargo from huge eighteen-wheelers. They spotted him and waved him over, immediately swarming the cart and unloading as swiftly as they could. Cloud frowned. He seldom saw workers rushing like these men were. It wasn't natural.

That, or the boss is a dick.

They finished mere minutes later, waving him off as quickly as they'd waved him over. Cloud pursed his lips curiously, but shrugged it off. He had no interest in the way this place was run. He'd be only too happy to walk out of there. Run out of there. Whatever. Either way, he was sure as hell gonna keep a spry pace until he'd reached his car and gone.

There you go, he thought, wheeling the cart out of the entrance. That wasn't so hard. Didn't I tell you? CEOs don't waste their days overseeing the going-ons of their companies. Nobody does that, you paranoid freak. You're safe, you hear me? You're safe, you're home, you're-"

"Oh. You. Wait. Shouldn't I sign for the packages?"

Cloud came to an irritated halt. He squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to go home, he wanted to leave, he wanted everyone in this god-forsaken hellhole to leave him the fuck alone…

"Yeah," he muttered. "Sorry about that." He opened his eyes and turned around. And then froze in a matter that might have been comical if it wasn't for the complete horror visible on his face.

The man standing before him was beautiful. No one could ever argue that. His face was androgynous, lovely, delicate without being weak, and so perfect it almost took Cloud's breath away. He was tall, and dignified, and the undeniable air of power- _so strong, he was always so strong_ -about him stole the air out of Cloud's lungs.

 _Well,_ Cloud thought, his subconscious trying to find some measure of hilarity in the situation. _I was right. The boss really is a dick._

The white-haired man standing before him came to a halt. His face froze for a minute, before those perfect lips stretched up in what would have been a smile on anyone else. On him, the expression looked terrifying.

"Well," Sephiroth said. "If it isn't Cloud Strife."

Cloud's clipboard fell to the floor, clanging almost sacrilegiously across the virtually silent parking lot. He took a shallow breath. Then another. And another.

And then he spun around and ran.

"Cloud. Stop."

And God, God, he'd never been able to deny that voice anything. He'd never been able to deny him anything. His breath hitched in some combination of terror and fury and deep, binding pain, and he came to a halt.

 _Please,_ he prayed quietly. _I'll do anything. Just please let this be a dream. Please let this be a memory. Please, let me move._

He didn't.

Five steps echoed behind him, and then a soft hand, strong as steel, clamped down on Cloud's arm and pulled him backwards.

Cloud made a sound that might have been a whimper, or a squeak, or some other noise that was ridiculous but honest in its terror, and closed his eyes. He dug his heels into the floor in the only protest his petrified body would allow. He couldn't breathe. This wasn't right. This wasn't fair. He was supposed to be over this. He was over this. This wasn't him. This couldn't be him. This immobile, motionless, terrifyingly weak body could not possibly belong to him. Cloud was strong. He'd made himself strong.

This could not be fair.

"Cloud," a soft, soft voice whispered against his hair. Cloud held back something that was not a sob, was not a whine. _I hope my hair pokes your eye out_ , he babbled internally. _Should have used more gel._

"Cloud," Sephiroth repeated. His voice lilted with cruel amusement. It had to be amusement. Happiness could not sound so terrible. "It took you very long."

Cloud's eyes snapped open.

In a surge of strength he would never be sure how to replicate, he tore himself out of those arms and spun around. He was gasping for breath. His whole body was trembling. He felt close to falling, and almost wished he'd never left the safety-terror, terror-of those arms.

"Don't touch me," he said, his voice unexpectedly steady and only a slight bit louder than normal. "I don't know you. Don't touch me."

And with that, Cloud turned tail and ran.

Elsewhere, buried under a mound of Dalmatians:

"I don't see how it could have gone wrong," Riku said, cradling a puppy in his arms. It slobbered all over him. He barely noticed. "You were supposed to meet Roxas. He was supposed to fall madly in love with you. You were supposed to live happily ever after. It was a good plan. A safe plan. It was foolproof," he said, in a voice that sounded almost like a whine. "Aren't you supposed to come with a guarantee?"

Axel snorted. "I'm good, but I'm not a miracle worker. And Blondie hates your guts. You shouldn't have introduced me as your best friend. As far as he's concerned, any friend of yours is probably public enemy 1."

"Shut up," Riku said. "It was all going fine. Sure, Roxas might have hated me, but it's not like Sora did. I could have won him over eventually. But as soon as you show up, it all goes to hell."

"Sort of felt like it was going to hell before I got there."

"There's nothing wrong with making nice."

"Problem is, nice isn't the only thing you want to make with him."

"It was an accident," Riku said, something like despair crossing his voice for the first time. "I tripped. I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't tripped. You know that, right?"

"You don't have to justify yourself to me," Axel said. "I know."

Riku held his puppies a little more tightly. Then he sighed. "Whatever. I don't care. I'd just like to go back to being able to like someone in peace."

"Peace," Axel laughed. "You want peace?"

"You know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," Axel agreed. "But people like us don't do well in peace."

Riku laughed once, then quieted. "Yeah," he said. "I get it."

They sat there for a moment, before Axel sighed, lacing his fingers together and cracking the knuckles one by one. "Which is why this Strife family is going to be good for us. If nothing else, they'll make things interesting."

"Not the word I would have used."

"Accurate," Axel said. "Honestly, I can't see why you don't like Roxas. He's a livewire."

"He's a good-for-nothing punk," Riku said. "That's why the first person I thought of when I decided I wanted him out of the way was you."

Axel laughed. "I'd call you an asshole, but if our tastes coincided you'd be more interested in him than Sora, and I'd suffer quite a bit of emotional turmoil regarding the whole friend thing before I snatched him away from you."

"You're a bastard."

"Thanks," Axel said with a grin. "I'm not joking, though. I like him."

"Better you than me," Riku muttered. He sighed, cocking his head back and staring at the sky. "But we can't really do anything about that right now. Sora's mad, and Roxas is two steps away from killing me with a shovel. Better to let them cool down before we go and talk to them again." He frowned thoughtfully. "D'you think I can blackmail Zexion into helping me?"

Axel rolled his eyes and stumbled to his feet, dusting himself off. "You _have_ no blackmail on Zexion. And have you ever seen him do something nice for anyone with no promise of personal gain? Nah, your best chance is to explain yourself to Sora and come clean. Or beg."

Riku raised himself up slowly. "I don't know. I'll think it over tonight." He ignored the yipping puppies at his ankles and began walking towards the house, waiting for the dogs to trail after him.

"By the way," Axel said. "I was just thinking. What do you think Blondie and Sora meant when they said ' _This means war_?'"

Riku scoffed and opened the door. "Who knows. Don't worry about it, though. What's the worst that could happen?"

"All right, guys. Operation: The Chickens Are Coming is now commencing. Does anyone have any further questions?"

Demyx raised a hand. "Yeah," he said, side-eying his two brothers. They were shouldering knapsacks and painting war stripes onto their faces. "Why am I going along with you two?"

"For glory!"

"For honor!"

"And because Mom'll kill you if she finds out we went and you didn't!"

Demyx hid a flinch. "That's horrible."

"That's pragmatic," Roxas responded calmly. "Now." He pulled on a black overcoat and drew the hood up to cover his face. "Let's go."

With one last sigh, Demyx followed his two younger brothers out their bedroom door.

The trio tip-toed down the quiet hallway, made their way past their mother's study, slid passed Cloud's empty bedroom-the blond had returned home from work for only the three minutes it took to walk to the kitchen, grab his carton of B&Js, and walk back out-walked down the stairs, knocked over a priceless vase, caught said priceless vase, continued down the hallway, knocked over an umbrella stand, stepped on a recuperating Vinnie's tail while trying to save the umbrella stand, opened the front door, kicked Vinnie out, and finally, three near heart-attacks later (all Demyx's) filed down the driveway.

They came to a stop before the Leonhart house, and stared quietly up at its foreboding walls.

"Are you guys ready?" Roxas asked. Sora nodded. Demyx gulped, which all parties present figured amounted to about the same thing.

"Paint?"

"Check."

"Masks?"

"Check."

"Camera?"

A pause. Demyx glanced around.

"Never mind," Roxas muttered. "I grabbed it myself. Now, the only problem is this: how're we gonna get the dogs?"

Sora laughed. "No worries. I got you covered." He reached into his knapsack and pulled out a very large piece of steak.

The brothers blinked at it. It blinked back.

Sora winced sheepishly and laughed. "Sorry. It's been in my book bag since school ended. Science project."

"They can't eat that," Roxas said.

"Of course they're not gonna eat that," Sora said, with no small amount of affront. "They'd get sick."

"I think it's sentient," Demyx whispered. "We could sell it."

"Family honor over monetary gain, Demyx," Roxas said, hiding a smile. He grabbed a stick, speared the slab of steak, and inched forwards towards the Leonhart's front door. "Now. I guess all we can do now is wait, huh?"

"Not for long," Sora laughed.

A troupe of puppies were steadfastly marching single-file out of the doggy door and down the sidewalk towards the three brothers. The dogs stared curiously up at them. The three boys stared back down. And then the lead puppy plopped down in front of Sora, wrapped its front paws around his ankle, and nuzzled.

Sora sat himself down so quickly he almost broke a leg. He quickly disappeared in a swarm of black, white, and pink, giggling happily. "I think we've got seven over here," he said. "How many did we need, again?"

"Eight," Demyx supplied. "We still need another one."

"Not anymore," Roxas said, grabbing hold of one that was trying to squirm under his coat. "Here."

Sora took the puppy and cradled it. "All right. Can you grab the paint?"

Demyx handed the bucket over, but frowned. "Are we sure that's safe?"

"It's fine," Sora said. "We got it at the pet store. Zero VOCs."

"I don't know what that is."

"I don't think you have to. The important part is that our paint has zero of them."

"It's specifically designed for pets," Roxas said with a sigh. "You could drink it and you wouldn't get so much as a stomachache. Now, can we stop arguing about the paint and just get this over with?"

They did.

Fifteen minutes later, two satisfied young men (and one warring between satisfaction and abject terror) stood up and examined their handiwork.

"It looks good," Sora said.

"I don't think I've been this happy in years," Roxas said.

"We're gonna die, then Mom's gonna bring us back to life and kill us again." Demyx whispered.

"Stop worrying," Roxas said jovially, ignoring the way Demyx growled and quite obviously wished horrible things upon him. "Operation: The Chickens Are Coming was a success. The enemy has received our message. Our mission is done, and we will now retreat. Pack it up and ship out.

And with that, Roxas and Sora jogged down the sidewalk, up their driveway, and through their front door.

Neither of them noticed when their older brother didn't follow.

The instant Sora's leg disappeared into the doorway and the door closed behind him, Demyx's captor uncovered his mouth and released him. Demyx gasped for breath and spun around. And then froze.

Zexion was standing in front of him, and there wasn't a trace of a smile on his face. He obviously didn't appreciate the joke.

"What were you doing?" Zexion asked calmly. At Demyx's stunned silence, he sighed and continued. "I suppose that's a foolish thing to ask. It's obvious what you were doing. It's only that I was temporarily struck mute by this ridiculous display of juvenile delinquency, and couldn't figure out how to properly formulate my question."

And just like that, the floodgates opened.

"It was all Roxas," Demyx said, because fuck brotherly loyalty, he wanted to live. "And Sora, but mostly Roxas. I was only along to make sure they didn't accidentally kill something, it was _totally Roxas_."

Zexion's eyebrows raised. Demyx shut up.

"I don't like dogs," Zexion said. When Demyx braved a glance upwards, he continued. "Riku and Leon like them, but I think they're wastes of flesh and air, and I'd be quite happy if the lot of them left me alone. I don't really care if your brothers wanted to play arts and crafts, especially given that you actually researched what kind of paint. So stop prostrating yourself and get up. You look like an idiot."

Demyx opened his mouth to speak once more, then obviously thought better of it and stood up. Then he took a step back and stared at Zexion in a peculiar mix of nervousness and curiosity.

"Now," Zexion began. He frowned and dusted Demyx off. "Your brothers are gone, and quite honestly they probably won't notice your absence until they get settled in and come off their euphoric high. So come with me. I can't sleep, and I want to take a walk."

Demyx gaped at him for a long moment. Then he narrowed his eyes. "You sure?" he asked. "You're not mad at all?"

Zexion's only answer was to turn and being walking down the street. Demyx watched him, and then followed.

Sora and Roxas ran into their room and collapsed onto the bed in a fit of giggles.

"Oh, wow!" Sora laughed. "I can't wait to see Riku's face when he walks outside!"

Roxas snickered. "Tell me about it! It's gonna be great!"

Sora grinned at Roxas, leaned back on the bed, and closed his eyes. "See, Demyx!" he said. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

Now, because Roxas considered himself the most mature of the Strife brothers, he thought himself responsible for the well-being of his family. And so, when silence was the only answer to Sora's question, there was only one thing he could possibly say.

"We killed Demyx."

Riku, because he considered himself a worldly, intelligent sort of individual, began every morning with a trip to the front porch, where he would bend over and pick up the newspaper. Afterward, he would carry the paper to the kitchen and peruse it over a steaming cup of coffee and a warm plate of pancakes. Yes, Riku was a creature of habit, and he saw no reason to be ashamed.

Therefore, when Riku opened the front door and bent over to retrieve his morning paper, he discovered two things. The first was this: The Leonhart family had just moved to a new residence, and the previous owner apparently did not subscribe to the daily newspaper. Consequently, the poor unfortunate Riku would that day be deprived of his literary trek into the circumstances and happenstances of the outside world.

The second discovery, however, was a bit more irritating. One could possibly argue that Riku's irritation was spawned from the no-newspaper incident. However, I would venture an alternate theory.

The Strife brothers had not placed any of the dogs inside kennels, which would have potentially made their message easier to read. They'd headscratched the dogs into dozes and then arranged them in the correct position on the porch, sure, but they hadn't wanted to use cages or kennels, and so as insurance they'd taken a photo of the puppies and hung it up on the door. They needn't have bothered; the eight dogs were still in their exact positions when Riku opened the door.

Written across the back of each sleeping puppy was a single letter. These letters, when combined, formed an almost embarrassing epistle.

On the backs of his eight puppies was written: C.L.U.C.K.Y.O.U.

C.L.U.C.K. Y.O.U.

CLUCK YOU.

Riku stared. And stared. And just for good measure, he stared some more. Unblinkingly. And then when his eyes grew so watery the letters turned into wobbly puddles of goo, he slowly reached into his right pocket and pulled out a cell phone. He punched in the only number he had ever bothered memorizing, and waited. When the voice on the other end answered groggily, he began.

"Axel? Yeah, it's me. Remember when I said that there would be no revenge plot? Well. I think I was wrong.


	6. Chapter 5: Holy Crap

**Chapter Five: Holy Crap...**

Nausea is a horrible thing. Anyone who's experienced it can tell you that. Unfortunately, Roxas and Sora were both currently suffering from it, in addition to indigestion, an upset stomach, and a headache the size of Mars. Extreme stress and absolute terror will do that to a person. After all, it was 5 o'clock in the morning, Demyx had still not shown up, and their mother was going to serve them their intestines for breakfast. And, knowing her, it wouldn't even be a good breakfast. It would be under-cooked and maybe leaking blood. So, because their entrails were acutely aware that they would soon be served on a chipped china platter as a not-quite-mediocre meal, they were rebelling in a somewhat vigorous way. Namely, by trying to escape through the nearest orifice.

We join our heroes at this point, as they both writhe in complete and total agony on their bunk bed.

"Oh, God," Roxas groaned. "How on earth does one grown person get kidnapped fifteen feet away from their home, with their two brothers standing not three feet away?"

"Never mind that," Sora said. "Mom's not gonna care about that. What Mom is gonna care about is how on earth did we not _notice_ our eldest sibling get kidnapped when he's fifteen feet from our home and standing three feet away from us!"

The two brothers sat in solemn silence, contemplating their imminent death and disembowelment.

"I'm exhausted," Roxas mumbled, burrowing himself under the covers. "I don't want to think right now."

Sora snuggled in beside him, unwilling to force the effort he would need in order to climb up the bunk bed. Bone-numbing fear really takes it out of a person. "D'you think when Mom realizes that her eldest son and heir is MIA, she'll maybe let us sleep in? Y'know, as a last gift before she kills us?" Sora asked.

Roxas thought for a second, before realizing that thinking resulted in an even bigger headache than the mammoth one he was currently sporting. "Nah," he muttered. "Mom doesn't know it was our fault. So she'll freak out, wake us up, pry the truth from our weak and trembling mouths, and then she'll kill us. Slowly."

"Maybe he's not really gone," Sora muttered, doing his level best to stay awake. "Maybe he went for a morning jog."

"That's definitely it," Roxas mumbled, wearily blinking his eyes. "Definitely going for a jog."

Sora sighed and closed his eyes, letting his exhaustion carry him into Dreamland. The last thing he heard before succumbing to fatigue was Roxas mumbling something in irritation. He was barely able to catch the words before he fell into a fitful sleep.

"This…is definitely…Riku's fault."

The first thing Sora noticed when he woke up was that he felt like he'd been trampled on in his sleep. His slanting view of the alarm clock proudly proclaimed 8:08 AM. He groaned and rolled over on his bed, fumbling with his blankets, cursing the sun, and wondering why on earth he'd woken up so early?

The second thing Sora noticed when he woke up was that he was not alone in his bed.

Sora, being a teenage boy (and more importantly, being Sora), spent a few moments worrying himself into an apoplexy (as mostly-well-behaved teenage boys who still have their mother tuck them in on odd-numbered nights do not often wake up with another person in bed with them. It's just not done). Then he realized that, as the person in bed with him was a male, he at least didn't have to worry about impregnation.

Then the warm body beside him stretched, and Roxas poked his head from out under the covers.

"Sora," Roxas asked groggily, blinking the gunk from his eyes and yawning. "What's up? Why're you in my bed?"

They blinked at each other for a minute, confused. And then in a blinding flash that was not so much blinding as it was terrifying, the previous night's events came rushing back to them.

They both shot despairing looks at the bedroom door. It was painted white and yellow and looked like it'd come straight out of a horror movie.

Sora took a deep breath and bit his lip. "You think if we turn ourselves in, she might show us some mercy?"

"No," Roxas said.

"C'mon," Sora said, laughing nervously. "Mom's nice. She can't be too mad at us."

Roxas glared at him. "We lost her eldest child. Mom's not going to be mad at us. She's going to be furious. Or worse: disappointed."

"Don't even say that."

They both sat there a moment, quietly brooding over the sad state of their lives and the loss of their oldest brother and confidante. Finally, Roxas groaned deep in his throat and shook his head.

"There's no point in just delaying it," he muttered. "We should get down there."

Slowly, very slowly, the two brothers rolled out of bed and tiptoed across their rug to stand before their bedroom door.

"I don't hear anything," Sora whispered a few moments later. "No sobbing or anything. D'you think Mom didn't check up on us this morning?"

Roxas shook his head. "Mom would check up on us even if Vinnie went on a rampage and started blowing up her gardenias." He bit his lip worriedly and grimaced. "Maybe…Maybe she's still asleep? She might not have had to work today. I dunno, I didn't see her last night."

Sora scowled. "Yeah. Do you wanna know why we didn't see her last night? No, don't answer. I will tell you. It's because you spent the entire evening plotting. And losing Demyx, while you were at it."

Roxas met his brother glare for glare. "Maybe if you'd spent less time playing with those stupid, flea-infested mongrels you'd have been able to pay more attention to Demyx, instead of allowing some mysterious, invisible vagabond to make off with my favorite brother!"

Sora's face fell. "Wow," he said glumly. "You didn't, like, have to be so mean about it."

Roxas had the good grace to look abashed. "Sorry. I didn't mean it. I'm just stressed. Demyx isn't my favorite brother. I like the both of you. And it's not your fault."

Sora sighed and knocked his shoulder against Roxas's. "Don't worry about it. I know it's not my fault. It's yours."

Roxas's eye twitched.

"But it's not a big deal, right? I mean, it's not like Radiant Garden has a high crime rate, or anything," Sora said, voice only slightly uncertain. "There haven't been any murders or kidnappings in years, right?"

"Which, statistically," Roxas muttered under his breath, "probably means we're overdue."

"So come on," Sora continued. "We should have been looking the moment we realized he was gone. Let's go. Most likely he just wandered off."

Roxas shot him an uncertain glance but nodded and pushed the door open. With one final glance down the corridor, the two brothers began tip-toeing down the stairs.

And then they walked past the kitchen, and ground to a halt.

Inside the kitchen, alive and well and cooking what appeared to be breakfast, Demyx frowned. Also inside their kitchen, alive and well but mostly just _inside their kitchen,_ so did Zexion.

"Hello, Roxas. Sora," Zexion said calmly. He carefully placed his fork on his plate. "I'm glad you've already woken up. I think we have a great deal to talk about."

They froze. And then Sora rushed back to the kitchen table, fell to his knees, and did the one thing he'd sworn on Vinnie's life never to do: beg.

"I'm sorry! It's not my fault! We didn't even hurt them! I love dogs!"

"Did I say _talk_?" Zexion asked. "I meant _shut up_. Now, sit and eat."

Roxas and Sora shot each other looks.

"I'm not that hungry," Sora said.

Roxas nodded slowly. "It was a bit of a shock. I don't think I can eat."

Zexion carefully wiped his mouth clean of pancake crumbs. "Your brother worked hard on breakfast," he said. "It wouldn't be polite of you if you didn't eat. And after last night's shenanigans, I'd think the two of you would have worked up quite an appetite. Or am I wrong?" He smiled. It didn't make either of the boys feel better. "I'm not wrong, am I. Or do I need to call your m-"

They sat and ate.

"So," Sora began, talking around a mouthful of strawberry muffin. "Demyx. Where were you all night? We got to the room and you were gone. We were kinda worried."

Roxas shrugged in reluctant agreement. "Yeah," he said gruffly. "We thought maybe you'd been kidnapped."

Demyx opened his mouth to answer, but Zexion was already speaking. "He was walking with me," he said. He picked up a butter knife and slowly began spreading margarine on a slice of toast. "I couldn't sleep last night, and saw the three of you messing around in our yard. As I'd already decided your brother is the only one of all of you capable of keeping decent company, I came to the conclusion that he'd be a nice distraction. So I caught him after you two left and asked him for a walk."

Roxas narrowed his eyes. "I'll ignore the distraction comment," he said. "If you'll tell me why-wait, no. I'm not going to ignore the distraction comment."

"Why," Demyx said. It sounded less like he was asking Roxas a question and more like he was asking the world why Roxas had been birthed.

"To be fair, it was pretty rude," Sora said. "Really, it's not as if we're-"

"You painted our dogs," Zexion said.

"We used zero-VOC."

Demyx's intense contemplation as to whether it would be worth it to run away from home was interrupted by the sound of a door opening. A few seconds later, loud footsteps echoed through the hall, and Cloud entered the kitchen.

"Whoa," Roxas said.

"Oh," Sora said.

Demyx said nothing. He was to busy trying not to choke on his attempt to stifle his sudden horrified laugh.

"I appreciate the flattery," Cloud said. "Really."

To be fair, none of the boys could be faulted. Cloud had been gifted with the kind of complexion that inspired in others sudden declarations of love. Even at his most tired he generally looked as if he'd stepped out of Boys-R-Us. So when Cloud walked in, eyes lackluster and bloodshot, clothes looking a lot like yesterday's, and spikes definitely not spiking, his cousins were understandably shocked.

He collapsed onto a chair. A mildly terrified Demyx offered him a steaming pot of coffee.

"Sorry," Cloud said. "I had a long day." He took a long gulp from his liquid Lifestream and then frowned, appearing to notice their guest for the first time. "Oh. I didn't know anyone would be over." He frowned, slouching further in his seat and bending his head towards the table again. "Yeah. I'm gonna-"

But what he was gonna do would forever remain a mystery, because at just that moment a door upstairs opened and a loud, feminine voice shouted, "Sora, if you've finished the pancakes, you're getting disowned."

Sora snatched his fork back from where it was about to spear a pile, just as a pretty brunette pranced into the kitchen, briefcase and sweater slung over a shoulder. She danced over to Demyx and kissed him on the cheek, grabbing the plate of freshly cooked pancakes he offered her, and then proceeded to chew her way through them with the fervor of a video game fan during the announcement for Dynasty Souls III. Somewhere around pancake number six, she noticed the bemused gaze of their house guest. She swallowed, and held out a hand.

"Sorry," she said. "I'm Rinoa. The mother. And you're Zexion."

Zexion blinked at her, slow, trying to figure out who had introduced him, and whether they'd told her he was probably a villain. "I apologize," he said. "I didn't know I'd been introduced.

"You hadn't been," Rinoa corrected, with a smile that said she was definitely aware he was probably a villain. "But my sons said there were two kids, and since you don't look like a jumped up rock star with a fetish for belly button shirts I figured you couldn't be Riku."

Zexion slanted a glance at Roxas. He didn't look at all abashed.

"So," Rinoa continued. "Are you a student?"

"Pre-med," Zexion said.

"You're going to be a surgeon," Rinoa said.

"Is that a guess?"

"Mostly," Rinoa said. "It was either that or gynecology, but I thought surgeon was more suitable for the breakfast table."

Somewhere in the distance, Demyx was trying to drown himself in the pancake batter. Zexion ignored him assiduously. "Ah. And you?"

"Several," Rinoa said. "I was planning on pediatrics, but then I had Demyx."

Zexion pushed his fork into his plate. "And medical school was rendered improbable?"

"No," Rinoa said. "I just realized I hated kids."

Zexion tried to figure out whether that had been a joke. "You had two more of them."

"Yes, well, nobody's perfect," Rinoa said. "Also tell your brother to die in an abyss."

And with that, Rinoa drained her milk mug, grabbed her briefcase, and walked out of the room.

Zexion stared after her. When he turned back to the table, Roxas and Sora both looked embarrassed, Demyx looked as if he were going to faint from low blood pressure, and Cloud looked as if all he really wanted was another tub of ice cream.

"She's interesting," Zexion said.

"She's descended from half the Greek pantheon," Roxas said.

"She's going to be _so_ disappointed," Sora said.

Demyx said nothing. He was too busy trying to remember if stores still sold smelling salts.

"She's a good judge of character," Cloud said after a pause, quiet. "But she has a difficult job. That makes her shorter than she might be sometimes. More importantly, I wonder what she meant about your brother."

Zexion turned to him, face carefully blank. But at that moment, the front door opened again, loud steps slamming throughout the hall, and Leon Leonhart walked into the kitchen.

It was a token of how terrified they were that none of the younger residents of the Strife home made any fuss about a relative stranger opening-and-entering. Instead, Sora and Roxas simultaneously shot out of their seats and took a running leap to the stairs. Predictably, Cloud chose that precise moment to aim a very frosty, very chilly, very evil frown at them. The two brothers spent two seconds weighing the virtues of an immediate death that was only probable and a future one that was certain. Then they slowed, and turned to face Leon with a pronounced air of doom hanging over their heads.

"What," Leon said, "happened to my dogs?"

To their credit, Sora and Roxas almost made it out of the kitchen this time. Then Cloud cleared his throat.

They slunk back to their seats.

"Explain," Leon and Cloud both said. Cloud raised an eyebrow at Leon, who looked away. Neither Roxas nor Sora noticed this. They were too busy trying to make a case for their continued lives.

"I'm sorry, it wasn't our fault, we didn't mean to, there wasn't any harm done, your dogs are great, they're really-"

"-crappy, but we're sorry, and it's not like we did it without provocation! It was an eye for an eye, we only did it for-"

"-no good reason, I know, but I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Oh God, please don't kill me!"

"Quiet," Cloud snapped. He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. All he'd wanted was to make a good impression on Tifa and her family. Tifa had always been such a good friend. I mean, you have to like a person if you're willing to cross-dress and enter a wet t-shirt contest for them. And her husband had seemed decent. And best of all, Cloud thought with a firm inner nod, he seemed to understand the beauty of peace and quiet. Cloud could forgive world domination in someone who understood the beauty of peace and quiet. "Sorry," he said. "They get...loud. Easily. What happened."

The last statement had been directed at his cousins. It did not brook much nonsense.

Roxas began sullenly, turning to stare out the window as if supremely bored with the proceedings. "Well, it was really all Riku's fault, and we wouldn't have done it if he hadn't groped-"

"-It was only for revenge; we never would have done it if he hadn't poked…err…provoked-"

"-And then Sora said that Riku told him that you all had Dalmatians, and the paint was completely pet-friendly-"

"-So it really wasn't done to be mean, or whatever, Roxas just said it would be a warning-"

Demyx sighed and opened his mouth to help explain. Zexion quite wisely popped an apple tart into the open cavern before Demyx said a single word.

"I apologize," Zexion interrupted, turning to face Leon and inclining his head. "I knew about it last night, but I figured Riku had it coming."

Leon narrowed his eyes. "You always think Riku has it coming."

"To be fair, he always does."

"My dogs," Leon said. Zexion shut his mouth. Leon turned towards the other.

"I don't much care that all of you are either idiots or freaks," he said. "I definitely don't care how the lot of you decide to wreak retribution. You could hang him by his underwear on a flagpole and I wouldn't care except insofar as it keeps him from cleaning up his room. But you fucked with my dogs. Tell me why I don't call PETA down on you."

An awkward silence followed, in which Sora gamely did not point out that PETA was actually super sexist and Kairi didn't like them at all. Instead, Demyx opened his mouth. "Because I made bacon for breakfast and you're going to sit down with us and eat it?"

Leon began turning his head to glance at Demyx. He never quite made it though. Cloud tends to get in the way like that. "Yeah, okay," he said before he knew he was agreeing. "Whatever."

"Great!" Demyx cheered. "Here, let me get you a plate. Why don't you just pull up a seat next to Cloud? He'll probably be the best conversation today; I think you've freaked Roxas and Sora out. This is rare, so I hope you appreciate it. Do you want your eggs scrambled?"

Leon muttered something in answer. On the opposite end of the table, though, Zexion was watching the proceedings, brow furrowed just slightly.

It wasn't that he'd expected Leon to come charging in (illegally, by the way; why had no one mentioned that?) like a bull in a china shop. It wasn't even that he'd expected Leon to be completely unreasonable (for a rather dubiously convenient and forgiving definition of unreasonable). But Leon could be harsh sometimes. Not cruel, exactly; he didn't have the heart for it. But Leon was strict. Leon was stoic. More importantly, Leon didn't much like bacon. Which meant that whatever had just happened was out of character, and therefore did not make much sense.

"Demyx," he called quietly. When the blond cocked his head in question and walked over, he pulled out a chair and all but yanked him onto it. He ignoring the somewhat ignoble squawk of surprise that erupted from Demyx's mouth and leaned forward so he could speak quietly enough to be sure that none of the others, alternating between stilted conversation and shouting, would be able to hear. "Tell me about Cloud."

Demyx lifted his eyebrows. "That's not something I want to hear after being manhandled."

Zexion gave up on trying to figure out whether that had been a non sequitur in favor of saying, "You were not manhandled."

"I'm gonna have bruises," Demyx said. "I was totally manhandled."

"That doesn't have anything to do with Cloud," Zexion said.

"Yes it does," Demyx said. "The last time I was manhandled, the person doing the handling at least had the good grace to not start talking about other men until they were done with me."

Zexion released Demyx's arm like it was on fire. Demyx laughed in his face. "Joke," he said. "Mostly a joke. At least 80% a joke. What do you want to know?"

"Whether he's inclined to homewrecking," Zexion said.

"What," Demyx said.

"That was also at least 80% a joke," Zexion said. "What sort of a person is he?"

Demyx blinked, obviously confused about whether he should laugh the question off or take it seriously. He went for the latter. "A normal one? He's mostly nice. Intense. Likes his privacy. Gets sad easily, but doesn't like admitting he's sad so instead he just spends a lot of time doing manly shit like mowing the grass or raising chocobos."

"Is that manly?"

"Around here it is," Demyx said. "I don't know? People are hard to describe in just a few sentences. If you're interested in him, get to know him yourself."

"I'm not interested in him," Zexion said flatly. "I only like knowing what the people around me are getting into."

"Then you should probably be paying more attention to Sora," Demyx responded. "I mean, it's not likely your married parents who are definitely a conventional couple no different from any other conventional couple in the world are going to be interested in Cloud."

Zexion said nothing. Demyx blinked.

"Oh," he said. "Are they swingers?"

"They are not swingers," Zexion said.

"That was a very long pause," Demyx said. "They're totally swingers."

"They're not," Zexion said. "It's only that my mother and my brother have an odd relationship."

"That sounds so incestuous," Demyx said in breathless awe.

"Well, I thought it would be rude to just call her Tifa," Zexion sighed. "But that's not a conversation I really want to have."

The two of them fell quiet. Demyx turned to glance at the rest of the table.

None of them were paying attention. Sora and Roxas were both busy shoveling food into their mouths and muttering to each other. Cloud was holding an almost one-sided conversation about HBU, and Leon had started staring at his plate with an expression of single-minded intensity. Demyx watched them. He wondered why, just for a moment, everything had felt so faraway.

"He's not like that," Demyx said. "He's not gonna get in the way of someone else, no matter what sort of relationship your mom and bro have."

"I didn't say he would," Zexion said.

"And I wouldn't care if you had," Demyx replied. "You don't know him. You don't really know any of us. It's cool if you want to think bad things about any of our characters. You'd figure out whether you were wrong or right soon enough. But I'm just telling you now. He's not the type to involve himself in infidelity. Honestly, he's not really the type to involve himself in anything."

"That's fair."

"Yeah," Demyx said. "People think that, don't they."

Zexion raised an eyebrow, slow. "You don't think some people can honestly be entirely uninterested in relationships?"

"Of course they can," Demyx said. "But Cloud being uninterested isn't what I was talking about at all."

Zexion would have asked for clarification. Perhaps, although it was unlikely, Demyx might have even given him it. But:

"Zexion," Leon interrupted. "Come on. We need to go."

He was already waiting by the kitchen entrance, face impassive and very much a mask. Zexion stood, and took a step. Then he paused. Opened his mouth; told himself to shut up. "Ars Arcanum," he said. "They're playing at the Park on Saturday. Given your reaction to the posters yesterday, I'm assuming you know."

Demyx blinked at him. "Tickets have been sold out for a month, which is also incidentally the amount of time I've spent crying myself to sleep. So, yeah. I know."

"I have tickets," Zexion said. "If you want to go."

It took both of his brothers to stop Demyx from launching himself at Zexion's mouth.

"I'm gonna marry him," Demyx swore, after the Leonharts had left. "I'm gonna marry him and become his kept boy and spend the rest of my life raiding his wallet for concert money."

"Please don't compromise your chastity on the first person who gets you previously ungettable concert tickets," Cloud said.

"He's not currently in possession of chastity," Roxas said.

"I'm not compromising anything," Demyx said. "I am measuring the relative weight of my bachelorhood against the relative weight of Ars Arcanum, and finding the former lacking."

"I thought you didn't like Ars Arcanum."

"I love Ars Arcanum," Demyx said. "I just love me more. I don't know why this is a difficult concept to grasp."

"Don't deflower anyone on my kitchen table," Cloud sighed.

"I'll use the bedroom," Demyx promised.

The rest of the Strifes were saved the embarrassment of trying to work out whether or not Demyx was joking (it was difficult to tell with Demyx) by the ringing of the doorbell. A tall man stood there, wearing a crimson bathrobe. His hair was not yet gray, and tinged an odd sort of green (both Demyx and Sora would claim responsibility for this. They'd both be lying).

"Hello," Auron said. He peered over Demyx's shoulder, staring into the corridor. He shifted, and adjusted something he was holding behind his back. "Is Cloud home?" At Demyx's nod, he continued. "Good. I want to talk to him. All of you, actually," he amended. "I think you'll all want to see this."

A few seconds later the patter of little feet echoed throughout the hall, and three heads popped up curiously behind him.

"Hello, Auron," Cloud said, frowning in question. "Did you need something?"

The middle-aged man paused for a moment, as if fighting some inner struggle. His mouth twitched, and his shoulders shook wildly. Cloud frowned slightly. Strange. Auron didn't seem like the type who'd take methamphetamines. Just went to show you couldn't judge a book by his cover.

"Yeah," Auron nodded, shifting once more. "I was walking down the driveway to pick up my morning paper a few minutes ago, when I tripped over something."

"Sora," Cloud hissed in suspicion, but Auron shook his head and continued.

"At first I thought it was a stray brick; I'd been doing a little gardening. Then I realized I was wrong." He brought his hands from behind his back and revealed what was held in them.

He grinned. "It wasn't a brick."

In his grip was a strange, warbling, pink…thing. A thing that resembled a chocobo. A thing that looked an awful lot like-

"Vinnie!"

TWO HOURS EARLIER

"Alright, men-"

"Not a man," a short blonde said.

"And women," Riku continued. "I have gathered you three together for one purpose: retaliation."

"Yeah, yeah," Reno yawned, waving a hand through the air flippantly. "Whatever. Let's see the damages first, yo. Axel told me that something happened, but he didn't tell me what."

"That's 'cause I didn't know," Axel drawled. "The asshole wouldn't tell me. He wanted us here to see it ourselves."

"So let's see it," Larxene said, somehow appearing both supremely bored and totally amused all at once. "You little shits woke me up at seven in the morning."

Riku grunted, flipping his hair over his shoulder in a way that would have been a nervous gesture on anyone else. On him…no, it was still a nervous gesture.

"Alright," he said slowly, sliding his hands into his pockets. "Whatever. It really wasn't that big a deal. It was stupid, actually. Dumbest prank in the history of the world." The rest of the group raised simultaneous eyebrows, and he glowered. "Fine. They're on the front porch."

The group of four shambled up the driveway, peering curiously up at the eight puppies currently running around merrily on the porch.

There was silence for a grand total of three point five seconds. And then there was laughter. Lots and lots of laughter.

"Well, thanks," Riku muttered. "Nice to know I've got friends who care."

"So," Axel said a good five minutes later, when he'd finally managed to get a hold of his raucous laughter. "What do you want us to do about it?"

For the first time that morning, Riku smiled.

Cloud did not scream. Truthfully, things would have been better if he'd screamed. Cloud was entirely capable of screaming. He sounded like someone from an 80s slasher film, sure, but he could do it. Screaming would have been acceptable. Screaming would have signified upset, but not the immediate death of whoever had caused this.

Cloud loved his chocobos very much. And when one discovers his entire flock of chocobos dyed various (quite lovely, and also, for the edification of the audience, pet-safe and veterinarian-approved!) shades of pink, one tends to freak.

Cloud did not freak. He stood quiet.

Vinnie warbled happily and flung his huge wings around his owner.

Demyx suddenly gulped. "Umm, Cloud?" he began haltingly. "I really don't think this is a good time to tell you this. But…look." He pointed towards their lawn.

"Oh my God," Roxas whispered.

"That horrible jerk," Sora moaned.

"I'll kill them," Cloud said in a strangely empty monotone.

There, spread across the entire lawn, was what some might term a calling card. A very large, very red, very painted calling card.

 _lions eat chicken_

Auron sighed, turned around, and headed to his house, fighting a grin all the while.

He had the strangest feeling that life was about to get more interesting.

It had been a difficult morning. Leon was only in part referring to the dogs.

His younger brother glanced at him from the corner of his eye, face even blanker than his own. Zexion was good at that. He'd always been able to show only what he wanted to show. "You're going to get yourself in a rather large amount of trouble."

Leon turned towards him; wondered whether he'd been the one to teach Zexion a poker-face or vice versa. "Am I."

"That didn't sound like a question," Zexion said. "It really doesn't do to avoid the point."

"I don't answer to you," Leon said.

"Yes," Zexion replied. "Which is, for the most part, the cause of every problem you've ever had."

Leon said nothing for a moment. After a while, Zexion said, "His cousin says he's probably not interested, you know."

"I know," Leon said.

Zexion watched him, but didn't respond.

"I'll tell you when I figure it out," Leon said, at last. "I'll-I can do that much."

"Please do," Zexion said. "Then, perhaps, I'll be able to help you keep from ruining everything."

Leon might have answered. But at that moment, a preternatural shudder shot down both of their spines, instinctive and 100% convenient to the purposes of this narrative. They both stopped in their doorway and turned, as one, back to the Strife house.

They didn't have to walk far. All it took was four steps before they caught sight of Cloud trembling in apoplectic rage, his back turned towards them. Leon took another step. "Strife?" he called. "Are you alright?"

Cloud's head swiveled around so fast he pulled a neck muscle. His eyes narrowed into slits and his face turned a shocking shade of puce.

"Leonhart," he said, soft and silky, holding with quivering fingers a squalling, pink chocobo and standing directly in front of giant red words.

"This means war."

And with that, Cloud disappeared inside his house, cradling Vinnie in his arms.

Leon stood there, stock still, for five minutes. He probably would have remained there frozen for much longer if he hadn't finally registered the screaming giggles that had erupted behind him. He slowly-horror movie slowly-turned around, and his worse suspicions were confirmed.

Riku, Reno, Axel, and Larxene were standing behind a bush, bent double in laughter.

"Did you see his face!" Larxene just about squealed. "That was fucking priceless!"

Reno suddenly stopped laughing. He had apparently noticed Leon.

"I thought he was gonna burst a blood vessel."

"Guys?" Reno squeaked. Leon was looming ever closer, and he did not look happy.

"That definitely did it," Riku said, in the voice of someone who has never known defeat "Even Sora and Riku have to see the genius in this. They'll realize we took their prank in good fun, and everything will turn out fine. What did I tell you, Axel? It's foolproof!"

"Guys!" Reno yelped.

"What!?" They all asked simultaneously. Reno gulped in answer and pointed behind them with one shaking, trembling finger.

Leon was standing there, his fists clenched and a very scary vein throbbing on his forehead.

"I just had breakfast with the Strife family," he whispered silkily, and the group of four just about wet themselves. "And it was good. Life was good. And now," he said, waving at the complete war zone that was the Strife property, "Now, it is not. And I blame you."

Riku backed away slowly. Leon, quite obviously, did not allow this. His hand shot out almost of its own accord and grabbed his youngest son by the shoulder, pulling him closer until a hair's breadth separated them.

"I blame you, Riku," he whispered. "So I'm only going to ask this once. And you will tell me." His voice lowered almost diabolically.

"What. Did. You. Do?"

Hell is a scary place. But the Leonhart household is scarier.


	7. Interlude 1: In The Beginning

**Interlude One: In the Beginning**

Life is, as a general rule, not beautiful.

It's not that I'm incapable of finding beauty in things. On the contrary. There's a great deal of beauty in things. But I feel uncomfortable with the conceit that I'm meant to ignore the worst of life simply because it's not as palatable as the best. There is not often a silver lining. Dawn does not always have a chance to follow the dark. And in all honesty, the bottle is most likely half-empty because someone else drank from it and left you to foot the bill. I don't think that's pessimistic. It's only that life and all that it comprises is not the Technicolor trip so often seen in movies, and it's our job to make the most of it. If that often involves taking advantage of the people who _don't_ make the most of it, I don't see how I can be at fault.

This is what I believe. You should probably understand that.

I was born in November in a busy little town named after a Garden. This was a little over two decades ago. As far as I'm aware, my childhood was normal. I don't remember much of it. I wish I did, sometimes. Sometimes I wake up at night with pleasant almost-memories still tugging me down, and if I try hard enough I can nearly hold onto the feeling of peace.

My mother holds me in my dreams.

In my memories-which, to be honest, are only partly memories, and mostly fever-dreams-I see a tall woman. She has long, oddly colored hair, perpetually cascading loose down her back. I get my hair color from her, Leon says. I have no pictures. I don't know enough to doubt him. But in my memories she's lovely. She has high cheekbones and a soft smile. Her shoulders were always held straight, proud, and her neck was long and white. She always wore a skirt. I can't remember ever seeing her in denim. I can't remember ever seeing someone as sharp.

Sometimes, I wish I'd been able to spend more time with her. That is a secret, though I suspect Leon knows.

I (in my deepest thoughts, and only very privately) believe I was happy. That didn't last long after she died.

It was just small changes at first, I suppose. One day my father didn't pick me up from school. I didn't mind; it meant more time in the library. By the time I made it back home, it was dark and Leon was a seething mess. Father yelled at me for being late. Then perhaps I got underfoot while he was doing chores. Then maybe I didn't answer quickly enough when he asked me a question. Not that I answered anyone back then. For a while I found it rather difficult to speak. But little things were suddenly very serious. It took perhaps half a year before the abuse began.

I'm not going to talk much about that. These are the facts:

Fact: Leon was a sophomore in high school, and he used every excuse in the book to stay away from home. He joined club after sport after volunteer organization after study group, all in an effort to keep away. It's perhaps hypocritical to blame him. I'd have done the same thing.

Fact: I was eleven. I couldn't do much in the way of protecting myself.

Fact: I won't like it if you start waxing rhetoric about social services or the police. Do some research first.

Leon didn't know. I made sure to hide it from him-unwilling even then to be the object of pity, and still this side of terrified about the fuss he'd most likely make over our state of affairs-and Father certainly wasn't talking. So the beatings went on for well over three years before Leon discovered. I did a very good job at keeping it all secret. The only reason I was ever exposed is because a broken collarbone is very difficult to hide. I might have even managed to keep that hidden, if Father hadn't decided to choose the exact moment Leon walked in to shove me down the stairs.

My brother fixed things. I've never known whether to love or hate him for that.

He did a decent job as a parent, especially given the fact that the summer previous I'd rigged the horn of his motorbike to blare _The Battle Hymn of the Republic_ at odd intervals and he'd chased me across half the town and hung me up by the seat of my pants to a stop sign. Leon has always been an adult, and I've always been me. He left me to my own devices for the most part, but he was strict, and responsible, and...things were fine. He demanded only one concession: he'd just been accepted to the University of Hollow Bastion, and we would pack up and move.

Hollow Bastion was thousands of miles away from our old town, but I had little issue leaving. Balamb Garden held no attraction for me. It was too militaristic, too busy, and held too many memories of people I didn't much want to think of. I wanted to leave. So we did; one summer before I'd begin high school, Leon bought an apartment in Hollow Bastion, and we moved.

The next years passed in relative peace. I went to school. I excelled in school. I spent the first month finishing all my homework for the entire year, spent the next one gathering blackmail on half the seniors, and then proceeded to, very quietly and from behind at least three proxies, play. The people I socialized with were the same sort of person as I was. That made things simple. Not enjoyable, perhaps. It's hard to enjoy yourself when you can only stand one of your friends and regularly want to commit murder towards the rest. But at least I knew them. At least I never thought Marluxia and Saix and Larxene and Lexaeus were anything other than what they were.

Time flew faster than I thought it could have, but each week was a ritual. A comfortable (even enjoyable) one, to be true, but ritual nonetheless. I liked it. My life was about as rewarding as I could make it, and I was, if not happy, at least content.

Leon's engagement, then, came as a bit of a shock.

It was a few days before I managed to weasel any sort of information out of my older brother. Truth be told, I'm almost surprised that it didn't take longer; my brother's not talkative at the best of times. I'm not sure how many hours of library time I had to sacrifice before I managed to trick him into divulging his secrets, but they were well worth it.

I'd like to think the reason he told me was because-in the end-the largest reason he married Tifa was for me. It would be a bit presumptuous, after all, to make a decision on someone's behalf and then neglect to inform said person of this decision. More likely, however, he told me because I went on a hunger strike and refused to speak to him until he did so first.

Leon met Tifa through Yuffie his senior year of college. We'd known Yuffie for a few years then; she moved to Hollow Bastion with her father a year or so after we did; something to do with a custody agreement and swordplay and a possible misdemeanor. The last is assumption, but seeing as how the only reason we met the girl was because she tried to steal a pie we had cooling on the window of our apartment (our twelfth story apartment, by the way-I suspect pulleys), it's a logical one.

One day, Yuffie followed Tifa to class for a shadowing project. That's what she says, anyway; I remain thoroughly convinced it was a not-so-clever cover-up to disguise the fact that Yuffie was a delinquent who cut class every time she could. Dubious grounds aside, however, the point remains that Yuffie followed Tifa to HBU, and because boredom was the mother of invention, she decided to play matchmaker.

Years later, Tifa told me that it was infatuation at first sight. I don't know why. But the crux of the matter was that Tifa fell for my brother, and because she's always been a proactive sort of women, she pursued him for the rest of her freshman year. Normally, that would have been that. Leon never liked people very much. More importantly, not many people can put up with him. Hell, he can't put up with many people. But Leon and Tifa matched. I don't know what was different about her. She's wonderful, of course, but Leon is Leon, and that typically precludes any hope of friendship. But they did. They were friends. They became friends.

Leon and Tifa nurtured their friendship for three years. Then he proposed.

To this day, I'm not quite sure why he did it. I'm even less sure why she accepted. I think sometimes that they were both lonely. I think they'd both gone too long without anyone to offer total, selfless support. I think they were tired, and growing older, and weighed down by too many things. For Leon, I might have been one of them.

Lexaeus asked me once whether I was okay with the thought of Leon marrying her. Whether I felt stressed about a new mother figure entering my life and potentially displacing the old one.

I said no, because that wasn't a conversation I particularly wanted to have. Most days, I'm relatively sure it's the truth.

Tifa was a mother. Not literally, of course; to the best of my knowledge, Leon was her first serious relationship. But she loved children, and she loved nurturing. She loved loving us, and that was all that mattered. I could accept that. I could like it. And the tiny part of me that still remembered watching fireflies with a tall woman with hair that reached the small of her back desperately wanted it.

She never replaced the memory of my mother. That's impossible; I don't remember enough about her to be able to replace her. But Tifa forged for herself a pedestal that I found myself all too willingly giving her dominion over. She was strong, and intelligent, and in possession of a bold sort of pride that commanded the respect of all who saw her. She was special. Maybe she became my mother.

I graduated at the top of my class and was accepted into HBU. A handful of my friends followed me; the others began working. Life was…good. It was good.

Then one day, I decided to forego my calculus lecture in favor of taking a walk to the local grocers', and with that simply decision our lives shifted once again.

To be honest, I'm not one for math. I'm good enough at it; I'm good at most things. But my disposition favors language and science. And anyway, I'd learned college Calculus in middle school; I could afford to miss a few lectures. I couldn't, however, afford to miss out on the fifty percent off sale the grocery store was having on noodles. So there I was, strolling down the street and congratulating myself for a job well done when I passed the orphanage.

A haughty looking teenager lounged on the steps, arms folded and staring into the distance with a pensive expression on his face. His hair was white. He was wearing a yellow tee and baggy blue jeans - I remember the clothes because I thought he looked like a clown.

I wouldn't have cared. I need you to know that. I don't have enough room in my heart to feel for every child who doesn't have a family. It's not the way I was built. But I know greed. I've seen it in the faces of more people than I know how to count, and each time it makes my stomach squirm uncomfortably and my heart harden in a grim sort of fear.

I saw him. To this day I've never seen a person who wanted more.

I spent five whole hours weighing my options before I came to the logical decision.

"I would, for the record," I said that night at dinner, swallowing around a mouthful of meatball, "appreciate a brother."

Tifa, to her credit, did not fall sideways off her seat. The same could not be said of Leon.

"What," he said.

"You heard me," I replied. "I want a brother."

Tifa turned a shade of red so violent I wasn't quite sure it was healthy. "I'm really not sure that's something we should be discussing at the dinner table."

"Ninety percent of sitcoms would disagree," I said. "It's not a particularly abnormal request."

"Yes," Leon said. "It is."

"It's not," I said. "Most children want siblings."

"You're not most children," Leon said. "And the only reason you would ever actually ask for a kid brother is because you thought you'd be able to boss him around. Given the fact that babies take a while to grow old enough to terrorize, I don't think that's what you want."

I didn't like the use of the word _terrorize_. Neither, it seemed, the moment he realized what he'd said, did he.

I took a moment to collect myself; did not look Tifa in the face.

"I didn't ask for a baby," I said finally. "I only asked for a brother."

Tifa understood first. I watched the realization dawn over her like a curious, surprised dawn.

"I was passing by the orphanage this morning," I said, when I realized Leon still hadn't quite made the leap. "My calculus class was canceled. I saw a boy sitting on the steps. I thought perhaps this would be something we'd like to do."

Leon watched me. "We."

"Well, you certainly wouldn't be the only ones forced to put up with him," I said.

"I don't think that's exactly how it works."

"Of course not," I said. "But he looked like he could be vicious, and I thought that I'd volunteer the suggestion."

The two of them studied me carefully. It occurred to me after a moment that perhaps _vicious_ was the wrong word to use, given that neither Leon nor Tifa had ever exactly understood (or appreciated) that part of me, but it had been the truth. I'd never been able to put up for long with people who wouldn't be able to tear me down. Except for them, of course, but I wondered about even that sometimes.

I don't know why I zeroed in on him. I want you to understand that. I don't believe in past lives, I don't believe in things like regret. I saw him, and I hated him and needed him in our family in equal measure, and I do not know why. But it happened. I'd spent a long time learning that it didn't always do to fight the things that 'just happened.'

"This isn't something we've talked about," Leon said quietly. "It's not something I'm sure we should even try."

"I know," I said. "I want you very aware of the fact that I do."

They looked at each other. Their hands, clasped between them under the table, both looked like they were trembling.

Then Tifa sighed.

"I would like another son," she whispered.

And that was that.

Leon and Tifa took the next day off, and visited the orphanage. When they got back home, Tifa was smiling.

"Riku," Tifa sang happily. "His name is Riku."

The following months were trying, to say the least. Week after week of orientations and interviews, some at the orphanage, most at our home. I'm fairly certain Leon began taking medication for a peptic ulcer. It was irritating, to be frank, but it was worth it. They hoped it would be worth it.

Finally, months later, Leon and Tifa drove to the orphanage, and when they returned, a quiet, white-haired boy came with them.

For just one moment, everything snapped into place.

That lasted for exactly the length of time it took Riku to open his mouth. I'd known it wouldn't be difficult; my first impression of Riku had been greed. People who want and want aren't always very nice. I'd just hoped he'd learn to handle it like an adult. I'd hoped he'd grow to appreciate the family he'd been given.

And as always, the mother bore the brunt of it.

Tifa wasn't a stay-at-home mother in the sense that most were; she worked full-time. Her full-time, however, was from seven in the evening to three in the morning; she ran a bar on the opposite side of the city, and would arrive home in the early hours of the morning exhausted. Then she'd wake up, and most of the time I managed the household chores but if I didn't she would, no matter how tired she still was. I tried not to let that happen too often.

Through it all, Riku would be there.

It's not that he was cruel. He was standoffish and irritable, but he wasn't often cruel-at least, not in the way we generally define the word. There was no tact in him, though; he was like a child who'd say spiteful things and know full well he was being mean, but would never comprehend that someone was being hurt by his words.

I could argue him into silence, of course; as intelligent as the boy turned out to be, he's never been able to match me. And Leon was Leon-enough of an authority figure to scare respect out of Riku, but not enough to spark insolence. But Tifa was our mother. She loved him. A harsh word from him would sap the anger right out from her; she'd listen to his fury, would put him in his place if she thought he was going too far, but for the most part she let his anger wash over her. I suppose she thought that he'd been through enough that anger was his right.

I don't know how many times I'd lie in bed at night and hear Tifa's quiet sobs from the bedroom next door, and listen to Leon's soft words of awkward comfort. It made me angry, which made me sharp towards the boy, which made him irritable, which would inevitably send Tifa back upstairs, her whole body taut with indecision-half of her wanting to shut the boy up, the other half wishing only to appease him.

As things are wont to do, however, it eventually came to a head.

Tifa had been speaking to Yuffie; she wanted her to bond with Riku. They were almost the same age, and Riku was such a quiet boy, so socially inept; of course he'd appreciate a friend like Yuffie. So, one Saturday Tifa invited her over and introduced them.

Leon wasn't home that Saturday. I'm glad. If he had been, things would have ended much differently.

She introduced herself. She launched into a long spiel. Something about ages, about school. About hanging out with each other. About how they would certainly be friends.

Riku stared at her for a moment, face impassive. And then he lifted his eyes and looked at Tifa.

"That's really annoying," he said, voice low. In the living room, Tifa froze.

"I'm not a kid," he repeated, the words coming louder now. "I'm not lonely. I don't need your pity. You haven't even had me for six months, and you think you can treat me like a brat? You're so fucking condescending. You're seven years older than me. You're not my mother. What the hell do you know? You don't know anything."

Riku might have continued. I don't know. It didn't matter anyway; Tifa stood quietly, turned, and walked up the stairs. I watched her. I wondered whether it would hurt her more to keep him here or to have the boy sent back.

I didn't see the slap. I just heard Riku gasp, and saw him sprawl back onto the sofa cushions, eyes wide and cheek red. Yuffie stood over him. Her eyes could have been made of stone.

"You get that one free," she said, "because you've only been here for a handful of months. So maybe you don't know that Tifa and Leon love each other, platonically or not. And maybe you don't know that both of them never had conventional upbringings, and so probably view family a bit more highly than your regular people. Maybe you've had your head up your ass for the last few months, and Tifa, being Tifa, has been totally willing to accommodate you because she believes that your pain is more important than hers. But I'm going to tell you something that I want you to remember for the rest of your life, asshole. There is no one in this world who is ever going to love you as much as they love Tifa, and it's not because she's known them for longer. It's because she's kind, and you're not. Actually, the only person in this world who's ever gonna love you more than they love Tifa is Tifa. Think about that the next time you throw her love back in her face."

Yuffie took a step back. Her face looked very pale.

"Go to hell," she said. "You don't hurt people who love you. Go to hell."

Riku said nothing for the longest while. His head seemed a heavy weight, bowing towards the floor as if his neck was not strong enough to support it. I could see frustration in the white-knuckled tension of his fists, in the stiffness of his shoulders.

And then, as if moving through a slow tide of molasses, he lifted his head, raised his hands to her shoulders, and pushed Yuffie gently back.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I-I'm…I'm sorry."

Without giving either of us time to speak, he climbed to his feet and walked up the stairs.

The next time Yuffie visited our family, Tifa was laughing, Leon and I were smirking, and Riku was covered from head to toe in batter as he awkwardly poured pancake mixture-alongside our mother-into the skillet.

And that was our life.

It was never perfect. That's all right; life is seldom perfect. I was content, and I figured that's all I could ask for. If I sometimes wished to find a place away from the kinetic hustle-and-bustle of the city, I ignored it.

I wasn't about to say no to an opportunity to leave, though. When Leon and Tifa asked me one evening if I'd be comfortable with moving somewhere quieter, I shrugged and buried my face deeper into the Hollow Bastion Times to hide my smile.

We moved to a small suburb less than an hour's drive from Hollow Bastion. A quaint, backwards little town called Radiant Garden. Tifa's best friend had recommended the place. Apparently, Aerith's boyfriend had finally agreed to cohabitation, and the house he left would be our home.

We moved in. We met the neighbors. I think Riku fell in love with him on sight.

Probably things would be easier if he hadn't.


	8. Chapter 6: Damn It!

******Chapter Six: Damn It!**

As previously stated, some people believe that women are very scary beings. This has little to do with any innate difference in the sexes, and a lot to do with the fact that some like to persist in the fallacious, somewhat maladjusted belief that women are incomprehensible. Women are not incomprehensible. Women are humans, and are therefore just as inclined to alternating fits of brilliance and nonsense (lbr: mostly brilliance) as anyone else. But the patriarchy is the patriarchy, and if the patriarchy has backfired on men by convincing them that women are mysterious creatures prone to fits of violence, well. That's its own damn fault. The point was, some people believe that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Riku would beg to differ.

A murderous Tifa made him want to piss his pants. A murderous Leon, however…he swallowed, and his throat involuntarily emitted a high-pitched whine. A murderous Leon made him wish for a rusted knife with which to impale himself. Or a falling safe. Whatever got the job done quicker.

"Riku," Leon breathed, voice barely audible. "I asked you a question. A question, Riku. I asked you a fucking question, and you will answer me." He leaned in closely, his eyes impossibly wide, bulging, and scary. "Now. Tell me. What did you do?"

Riku broke. Really, you had to admire the kid for holding out this long.

"I'm sorry, but the dogs, and they painted Rolly, and he was furious with me, and the dogs-"

Axel sighed, and stepped forward. "It was only retaliation," he said, in what really was a very brave attempt to take some of the blame. "They were the ones who started it-"

"Axel," Leon interrupted. "I understand you want to help. But if you do a thorough enough background check, you'll find that Elena learned everything she knows from me."

Axel shut up.

"Now, Riku," Leon continued, voice still gentle. "You're a smart boy. I raised you to be a smart boy-"

 _No you didn't, you ugly bastard,_ Riku thought. _You've only had your grubby paws on me for the last three years._

"-but with the amount of natural intelligence you possess, I know I can't really expect you to be perfect."

 _I'd say I inherited it from you, jerk-off, but we're not related. Unless stupidity really is contagious._

"But this is by far the stupidest thing you've ever done. The stupidest. And you want to know why?"

 _No, you old fart, I don't want to know. What I do want to know is when you're going to wrench out my entrails and feed them to your goldfish so I can find some time to write a will._

"Because this time, you've irritated me. And if there is one rule on this good green Earth, it is to never irritate me."

 _Lord above, do I know. Just shut up and punish me already. It'd be better than listening to you talk about it._

Leon fisted his hand into Riku's t-shirt and pulled him up until his adopted son was standing on his tip-toes, nose millimeters from his own. And in that deep dark place where all the evil thoughts in the world collect, the anger of a man who'd just had war declared upon him by his one true love exploded in a kaleidoscope of badness, where it proceeded to simultaneously spray the teenage conspirators with bits of bloody, moldy gunk.

"Your little prank just fucked me over, Riku," Leon whispered. "So every morning I wake up cranky, it will be your fault. Every morning I wake up with a headache, it will be your fault. From now on, the situation in the Leonhart household is this: if something goes wrong, it will be your fault. If Zexion spills his coffee on Tifa's apron, it will be your fault. If Tifa forgets to unclog her amorphous mass of hair from out of the bathtub, it will be your fault. If I trip and fall over a chocobo, it will be your fucking fault." For the first time in the last fifteen minutes, Leon smiled. Sure, it was an evil, malicious smile, but it was a smile nonetheless.

"So there you go," Leon said smoothly. "I hope you enjoy your life."

And with that, Leon did an about-face and disappeared into his household, dead-bolting the door behind him.

Complete silence followed. When it was finally broken, all heads turned towards the speaker.

"Dude," Larxene whispered in awe. "Your dad is the shit."

Leon, for all his coldness, meanness, and all around dickishness, was-deep down-just a sensitive guy. Therefore, on the worst day of his life, Leon did the only thing he could possibly do: he screwed his eyes shut, clenched his fists, and bawled for Tifa.

"Tifa!" he roared. "I need advice!"

Leon's beautiful, lovely, kind, soon-to-be ex-wife bounded down the stairs with a spring in her step and a smile on her face. As soon as her toes touched the floor, she jumped towards Leon and wrapped her arms happily around his shoulders.

"Why, hello, Leon! How's my little moogle doing today?"

Leon growled.

"Well, judging from your face-not that it isn't a beautiful face, dear-'d say that you're just the teensiest bit pissed off at the moment. Riku's revenge not go as planned?"

Leon glared at her. "Are you drunk?"

"Only a bit, darling," Tifa said with a beatific smile. "It's been an odd week. Anyway, I could hear you yelling from all the way over there. It is a bit disappointing, though, isn't it? Don't you narrow your eyes at me, Leon Leonhart! I'm the one who's going next door to try for damage control, so you can just sit your ungrateful ass down on that couch and think about how cruel you were!"

Leon blinked. Twitched. Then blinked again.

"Wait," he said slowly. "You…you're going to visit the Strifes."

Tifa grinned. "Sure. Riku just royally screwed you over. I figured the least I could do was try to patch everything up."

Leon's mouth went flat for a moment. Slowly, he said, "I'm not sure if I like that."

"I'm not always sure if I like you," Tifa said. "But I don't go around trying to make you stop."

"Tifa-"

"Calm down," Tifa said. "I'm not going to do anything stupid. I won't do anything that I think would really upset you. Just trust me. Cloud's my friend, too."

Leon's expression did not much change. At that moment, however, the _ding-dong_ of the doorbell rang through the house, and Tifa perked up. Leon raised an eyebrow at his wife in question. And then he stopped. Because Tifa had that look in her eye, and the only thing more frightening than that look was a mad-axe murderer intent on the systematic, if violent, destruction of humankind.

"Oh," Tifa said. "That should be Aerith. I asked her to come over, see; I wanted her to come help me with Cloud. He adores her, you know, so I figured she'd be the best woman for the job."

Leon frowned, but nodded warily. Well, Aerith was okay. Aerith was calm, quiet, and kind. The proverbial voice-of-reason. The water to Tifa's fire. Aerith wouldn't let Tifa get too out of hand. _Yes,_ he thought to himself, _having Aerith around is probably safer._

And then the doorbell rang again. Five times. Tifa's grin turned positively predatory.

"And that," Tifa all but sang, "is probably Yuffie."

If Aerith was water and Tifa was fire, then Yuffie was a power-plant undergoing a nuclear meltdown.

"I do not want Yuffie here," he insisted. Tifa, predictably, ignored him.

"We'll see you, Leon!" his wife hollered from the doorway, slinging her purse onto one strong shoulder and waving goodbye. "Don't stress so much! What's the worst that could happen?"

Half an hour and six Armageddon-esque fantasies later, Leon collapsed onto the sofa.

"Now, this is important. We have Leon's future in our hands. We can afford no setbacks. We will suffer no fools. We will walk in and we will conquer and Cloud will fall head-over-heels in love with my husband and all will be well, okay?"

Aerith and Yuffie both stared at her, absolutely dumbfounded. The three of them were currently standing on the front porch of the Strife home, but no one made any effort to knock. Finally, Aerith shifted uneasily.

"Tifa," Aerith said slowly, twisting her hands in her long dress. "When you called us, you…you didn't exactly clarify what we were coming over for. You said, and I quote, ' _Leon's life is ending and you're the only ones who can help him_.' Now, I'm a doctor. Therefore, when I hear something along those lines, I start believing that Leon's injured, and that you don't have enough money to send him to the hospital. I don't expect to arrive at your house, only to discover that not only is Leon completely healthy - thank goodness - but that this so-called life-ending ailment is merely a case of…of-"

"Blue balls," Yuffie interrupted flatly. Aerith sighed. Yuffie took the exhale as a sign to continue. "All right," she said. "Lemme get this straight. On Aerith's suggestion, you all moved to Radiant Garden, right next door to Cloud and Rinoa and the rest. Then Sora, being Sora, invited you over to dinner. As soon as Leon meets Spikey, he falls in complete and utter lust-"

"Love," Tifa corrected helpfully.

"-love with the Cloudster. Since Leon is Leon, he refuses to flirt, coquette, make passes, or do anything that could possibly leave his ass out on the clothes-line. However, all frigidity aside, it is strikingly obvious to you-his wife, I just want to emphasize that-that he wants to bend Cloud over and-"

"Yuffie!" Aerith squawked.

"-him into the kitchen table. Do I have that right so far?"

Tifa held her gaze. "Yes."

Yuffie and Aerith both went silent a moment. Then Aerith said, quietly, "I don't like this."

Yuffie snorted. "What's not to like? We're only aiding and abetting marital infidelity."

"You all know better than that," Tifa said.

"I'm sorry, but we don't," Aerith said. "Tifa, you moved in a day ago. This isn't the sort of decision you make from one day to the next."

"I'm not making any decision," Tifa said. "I'm just making sure that, if I want to make a decision in the future, the possibility will still be open to me."

"I don't think that makes sense," Yuffie said.

"It does," Tifa said. "Trust me, all right. It does."

The three women fell quiet. After a moment, Tifa spoke. "Does Leon know him?"

The other two glanced at each other. "Not that I'm aware," Aerith said finally. "They ran in different circles in college, and there were a few years difference between them. I don't think I ever saw them interact." She peered at Tifa more closely. "Why? Did Leon say he did?"

Tifa thought of Leon yesterday. Thought of the way she'd asked, and what Leon had said.

"I don't know," she said at last. "I don't."

Silence once more descended on them. Finally, Aerith shook her head, and turned to Yuffie. "So? Go on. What happened next?"

Yuffie launched back into the story with the relief born of narrowly escaping a rather awkward conversation. "Okay, so! All seems to be going well until Riku, who…likes Sora?" She blinked. "Really?"

"That's what they told me," Tifa said.

"But…statistically…is that possible?"

"Never you mind about statistical improbabilities," Tifa said. "Just go on."

"Right," Yuffie said. "Anyway. All seems to be going well until Riku, who likes Sora, makes a desperate ploy for Sora's attention by dyeing the entire Strife population of chocobos pink. This does not go over too well with Cloud, who misplaces his anger upon Leon. Now, being the loyal friends we are, we will attempt to patch up all Leonhart-Strife relations, thereby clearing the way for love at first sight. Is that right?"

Tifa grinned. "Yup," she crowed. "It's great, isn't it?"

Aerith sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I used to wonder why, exactly, none of Riku's plots ever worked. If he's even the slightest bit like you, though, I'm surprised he's made it this far."

"Well," Yuffie said brightly. "Standing around and talking won't accomplish anything! I propose we knock!" She raised one small fist and prepared to pound it on the front door.

"That won't be necessary," a flat voice said from behind them. "I'm right here."

Tifa, Aerith, and Yuffie let out a simultaneous gasp and spun around, clutching their chests. And then they shrieked.

Cloud sighed. "Why does everyone always do that?"

"I'm…I'm sorry, Cloud," Aerith whispered hesitatingly. "I-it's just that…"

"Cloud," Tifa said, haltingly. "Y-you're…you're soaked…you're completely covered in…"

"Blood," Yuffie said.

Cloud raised an eyebrow and looked down at himself. His arms were stained a faint pink color up to his elbows, and his boots were caked with something that was most definitely not mud. His eyebrow twitched, and he pushed past the three women to open the front door.

"It's not blood," he said shortly. "It's paint."

"Hah!" Yuffie cried, pointing an accusing finger at him. "A likely story!"

Cloud didn't answer. He walked into his house, traipsing red all across the linoleum. The three women warily followed him in, trembling slightly.

Cloud stepped into the kitchen and turned on the water faucet, rinsing the pink from his forearms. He sighed, adjusting the knobs until the stream turned warm. "Now," he said finally, refusing to turn around. "What did you three need?"

"Cloud," Tifa said, in tones of affront. "You were once my best friend in the history of the world. We don't need a reason to visit you!" Aerith and Yuffie nodded vigorously. It was always the quiet ones you had to watch out for, after all, and Cloud was a quiet one with a whole tray of kitchen knives within reach. Best not to antagonize him.

Cloud shot them a deadpan look. "Of course. That's why the three of you spent five minutes on my front porch debating whether or not to come in."

The three girls winced and shot each other nervous looks.

"Cloud," Aerith asked cautiously, wringing her hands together. "Exactly how much did you hear?"

Cloud shrugged. "Nothing really. I saw you all coming from my backyard. I was trying to hose down my chocobos. Someone dyed them pink, and then proceeded to disgrace and deface my lawn."

"All right," Tifa said. "But it wasn't Leon."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't say that man's name in my house, Tifa," Cloud said. "Your husband used himself as a distraction so his miscreant of a son could vandalize my babies, and then had the nerve to act confused. I'm sorry, Tifa, but I'm not seeing why you married him at the moment."

"Cloud," Aerith said with a sigh. "It really wasn't Leon's fault. You have no idea how upset he is about the whole thing. He didn't know that Riku would do something like this. After all," she continued, "you had no idea that your cousins spent last night painting their Dalmatians. Don't place the blame on Leon for something he had no control over."

"He came over because he honestly wanted an explanation," Tifa said. "Riku just took advantage of it. My baby's tricky like that. And Leon is so completely, utterly…distressed about this whole deal. He had no intention of ever hurting you. And he really, really, really-"

' _ **Really**_ ,' Aerith and Yuffie thought simultaneously.

"wants to be friends with you. You should see how he talks about you," Tifa lied (no harm in a bit of exaggeration, after all! All in the name of friendship!). "He thinks the way you work so hard to support everyone is amazing. He really admires you. He'd never want to risk our ties. Please forgive him."

Cloud stood there a moment, quiet. He was no longer trying to rub the pink from his skin, but hadn't yet raised his head, either. Finally, he sighed and leaned his weight on the counter, closing his eyes.

"I really love my chocobos," he muttered.

"We know," Yuffie said hurriedly. "And Leon knows, and he'd never purposely offend them."

"They were dyed pink," he muttered.

"But it truly wasn't his fault, Cloud," Aerith said, nodding with conviction.

"Vinnie won't let me wash him," he groaned, slapping his forehead with the hand still gripping the sponge. "Every time I try he starts to scream."

"Fuchsia's a really good color on him!" Tifa cried, slamming a fist into her opened palm and ignoring Cloud's glare. "You should let him be!"

Cloud snorted, but didn't rebuke the statement. He bowed his head onto one open palm, and sighed.

"I probably should go over and apologize, huh?" he muttered, shuffling his feet awkwardly.

He was only the slightest bit surprised when all three girls simultaneously relaxed.

"And this," Demyx said happily, "is the SidneyPark. Designed twelve years ago by Professor Yen Sid-I met him once, creepy old guy with some funky looking fish eyes, but I figure anyone who made a place this awesome can't be all that bad-it finished construction seven years ago and has since become the most popular tourist magnet within five hundred miles of Hollow Bastion. Almost as large as the original Sidney Land, it features many of the same attractions, including the signature parades and roller coasters. With an average annual gross income ranging in the hundreds of millions, many cities have begun calling for their own. Hourless River, in fact, is scheduled to begin construction within the year. And it all began here."

Zexion shot his companion a sideways glance. Demyx's cheeks colored just slightly, but he shrugged and tossed his head back. "I worked in one of their restaurants last summer. I had to memorize the spiel."

It was later in the afternoon, and after Cloud had discovered the war zone that was their front lawn, he'd kicked everyone out for fear of falling into a homicidal mania and hack-and-slashing them all to teeny tiny bits. Wisely, the three Strife brothers had agreed and, dragging Zexion along, had headed to Radiant Garden's largest tourist attraction.

"Yeah," Sora said. "This place is great. I mean, after a while you stop wanting to come here every single weekend, but it's good for parties, and they throw the occasional concert. _Limit_ played a few months ago, right?"

" _Curaga_ ," Demyx corrected. " _Limit_ was last year."

"And _Ars_ this weekend," Sora continued. "Which I guess you know, on account of how you're stick-and-carroting him with concert tickets."

"He's not stick-and-carroting him," Roxas muttered. "He's just carroting him."

"We've known him for like a day; I don't think he should be anything-ing him."

"Still alive," Demyx said. "Still right here."

"I'm not sure why you feed them," Zexion interrupted, waving a hand in the air. "They're your little brothers. As such, they'll probably always be mostly stupid."

"We could be your in-laws one day," Sora reminded him.

"I'm not sure why you'd even bring that up," Zexion said. "We've known each other a day."

"You're all missing the point," Demyx yawned. "The point is that Zexion and I are going to a concert, and you losers don't have tickets."

Contrary to Demyx's dearest wishes, neither brother burst into tears. Instead, he got Roxas looking supremely disenchanted, and Sora shrugging.

"I don't even like _Ars Arcanum_ ," Roxas muttered. " _Ragnarok's_ loads better."

"And anyway," Sora said, ignoring Demyx's outraged cry. "I promised Mickey, Donald, and Goofy that I'd hang with them this Saturday. It's Daisy's birthday next week, and we wanted to pick up a few presents."

Zexion raised an eyebrow. "Mickey, Donald, and Goofy."

"No relation," Sora said, very firmly. "No relation at all."

Silence greeted him. After a moment, Roxas sighed. "Just accept it," he muttered. "Life's weird like that. They really are-" Roxas trailed off slowly, frowning. After all, a bright flash of red had just entered his vision, and that was cause for hesitation.

Now, people have many different reactions when they see the color red. Some go into rhapsodies and start wailing about beauty and passion and one-true-love. Others go into convulsions and start roaring about blood and death and all things distraught.

Roxas, however, was different. When he saw the color red, his train of thought went something like this:

Axel. Riku. Die, die, die.

Roxas spun around, eyes blazing and a war cry poised on his lips. Then he sighed, sadly. Because the head of red hair that was flaunting itself oh-so-brightly in Roxas's range of sight did not, in fact, belong to the local pyromaniac, but to some random boy wearing an un-tucked dress shirt, black pants, and mud-coated boots walking beside an older bald man sporting designer sunglasses.

Roxas visibly deflated, muttering under his breath. Zexion shot him a curious look. "What was it?"

Roxas shrugged and kicked at a pebble. "Nothing," he mumbled. "I just thought I saw Riku's pyro friend."

Zexion frowned and followed Roxas's line of vision. And then the smallest of smirks tilted up his lips, where it proceeded to frighten the nearest toddler into hysterics.

"Oh," he said lightly. "You're correct. That's not Axel. Axel's hair defies gravity. That," he said, smirk widening, "is Axel's older brother, Reno. Going by past experience, he was probably there this morning. You know. When Riku and company vandalized your chocobos."

Roxas and Sora simultaneously swiveled on the balls of their feet to stare after Reno with large, unblinking eyes.

Demyx groaned and buried his face in his hands.

Reno was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. He'd been woken up at the crack of dawn by his delinquent younger brother who'd insisted on dragging him out of bed and halfway across town to the Leonhart household. He'd spent the better part of his Thursday morning chasing squawking birds across the lawn, slipping on chocobo patties, and spilling pink paint on his favorite boots. And instead of being rewarded for his efforts, he'd borne witness to the dressing-down of the century, courtesy of one Leon Leonhart.

He sighed and slurped at his popsicle. Yes, Reno was having a shitty day, and he had the distinct feeling that it was about to get worse.

"Rude," he moaned sadly. "I've got the distinct feeling that today is about to get worse."

Rude said nothing, but raised an eyebrow behind dark sunglasses and took a bite out of his funnel cake. Impossible; they were at the SidneyPark. How could life be anything but perfect?

"Reno, you bastard! You're freakin' dead!"

Rude sighed. Scratch that. After ten years of being Reno's best friend and-more recently-business associate, he really should have learned by now. Reno didn't look for trouble. It was more like trouble sniffed him out with bloodhounds, mauled him, and then proceeded to drag his mutilated carcass across the county.

Reno spun around, eyes narrowed and lips drawn tightly together. He looked down at the two shorter boys glowering menacingly at him and smirked, fighting back the unsettling feeling that was welling up in the pit of his stomach. The two kids looked strangely familiar, but he couldn't quite place them. _Oh well,_ he thought. _Brats this tiny couldn't possibly cause any trouble._

"Really?" he asked, gazing down his nose at them. "Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I've ever met either of you. Logically, therefore, I don't think I could have possibly screwed either of you over. I don't know how the hell you know me, but if you wanna start something, then I'll be all-too-happy to take it outside." He smirked internally. No, he had not practiced that speech in front of a mirror, thank you very much.

"No," a soft, silky, frighteningly familiar voice said. "You haven't met either of them before this moment. But they've heard quite a bit about you."

Reno froze, slowly shifted his eyes past the glaring ones of the two teenagers standing before him, and took a step backward. That was Zexion.

Yeah, uh. Reno recognized him.

"Oh," Reno said. "Shit."

"Yes," Roxas said. "Shit."

Now, Reno, for all his brashness, was actually rather smart. A bit on the rough side, sure, but no one could ever call him stupid. Therefore, his next actions weren't so much unusual as they were really quite unsurprising.

"I defect!" he said.

Sora frowned, as in not comprehending. "Wait," he said slowly, squeezing his eyes shut in confusion. "You…defect? You mean you're running away?"

Reno snorted. "With my tail between my legs, yo."

There was silence for the space of six seconds, before Sora and Roxas shouted the same word simultaneously.

"Coward!"

"Traitors don't deserve to live!"

"Where's your sense of honor!" Sora yelled in consternation. "Your dignity? Your pride!"

"Stop," Demyx shouted, which was out of character enough that everyone paused for a moment to look at him. When he spoke again his voice was lower, and he looked a bit like he wished he'd just snuck away without saying anything, but the point had been made. "The two of you always do this, just barrel into a situation and start yelling at people without pausing to question a thing you've been told. You're both acting like bullies."

Sora and Roxas gasped.

"I'm sorry," Zexion said. "But in this case your brothers likely have a point."

"And don't get me started on you, war monger," Demyx said. "We came here because we wanted to get away from all this BS. You're just baiting them. You should probably stop."

Zexion watched him quietly a moment, lips oddly flat. He debated the merits of arguing. And then he turned towards the others. "Reno is Axel's older brother," he said. "And Axel is Riku's best friend. More importantly, a somewhat difficult set of parents has left him more willing to defer to authority figures, in this case Leon, than he would ever be able to defer to Riku. If he wants to defect, there's little reason to say no."

The Strife brothers fell silent.

"So!" Reno interrupted, grinning brightly. "What do you wanna know? I'm your willing servant, yo. And as a special bonus, I'll even throw in my good buddy, Rude. Say hello to the nice new kids, Rude. They'll be working with us from now on."

Rude furrowed his eyebrows, but said nothing. He'd long since realized that a Reno on a warpath was a Reno in desperate need of backup, and as the best friend, he had to be there to offer aforementioned backup. No matter how much Reno deserved to crash and burn.

"What can you tell us?" Roxas asked, leaning forward. "I mean, what could you tell us that would honestly help?"

There was a pause, as Reno frowned and furrowed his eyebrows. He tossed his head back to stare at the sky, biting his lower lip in thought. And then a slow, malicious smile spread across the length of his face.

"Well," he drawled. "In this case, it's not really so much what I can tell you. It's more like what I can give."

"We really screwed that up, didn't we?"

Axel shrugged in faux-nonchalance, swinging his arms in a carefully casual arc. "They definitely didn't look too happy. Leon was pissed. And if Leon was pissed, that means Cloud was probably pissed. And if Cloud was pissed, Roxas was most definitely pissed."

"And if Roxas was pissed, then so was Sora," Riku added. He frowned. "He's probably mad at me."

The two of them pondered this for a moment, silent. Then Riku muffled an angry shout.

"I don't get it!" he cried. "My plan was flawless! I don't know how it went wrong!"

Axel shot him an impassive glance. "If you had listened to me in the first place, none of this would have happened. told you to just explain everything to Sora. The kid seems like the reasonable type; if you had just bothered to enlighten him, maybe it wouldn't have all gone to shit. And now, because of you, I've probably just blown every single chance I ever had with Blondie to hell."

"You never had a chance, idiot. I practically handed the kid to you on a silver platter, but you and your stupid catchphrase. 'Got it memorized?' How much more ridiculous can you get?"

"My catchphrase. That's why you think Blondie hates me?"

"Well, it definitely didn't help," Riku muttered. He sighed. "How does Zexion do it? He's known whats-his-face for a day, and he's already got a date on Saturday."

"It's not a date if one half of the equation doesn't know it is," Axel scoffed. "He's just trying to mess you up. And anyway-"

His cell phone rang.

Axel peered at his cell phone inquisitively. Caller Unknown.

"Yeah," he said, flipping it open. "Who is this?"

A loud, shrill voice made an entirely upsetting sound. "Oh my gosh? Is this you?"

Axel frowned. "What? Who the hell is this?"

"Oh my gosh," the voice answered. "It's him! It's him! Big Daddy, grab my purse, it's-"

Axel flipped the phone shut, eyes wide.

"Sorry," he told Riku. "Wrong number." He shook his head once, as if to clear it, and continued. "Now, like I was saying. Zexion's been succeeding because he's nice." Riku scoffed, and Axel grinned before amending himself. "To lover boy, at least. He's acting like a friend, gaining his trust. If things keep going his way, I give it one month before he springs a proposal and nails him on the-"

 _Ring._

Axel raised an eyebrow at the phone. Again: Caller Unknown. He frowned in irritation and flipped it open. "Yeah, what do you want?"

"Babies," the low, gruff voice on the other side said firmly. "Your babies. I want to have your babies."

Axel's face turned roughly the color of his hair. "I'm sorry," he said. "But I think you've got the wrong number!"

He slammed the phone shut, and glared at Riku, who was grinning at him curiously. "Twice in a row?" he asked. "It wasn't the same person, was it?"

"No," Axel said. "A different one. Sounded like-"

 _Ring._

Riku grabbed the cell phone from Axel's hands before he could throw it and flipped it open, bringing it to his ears.

"Yeah," Riku said. "What can I do for you?"

The voice on the other end screamed.

Riku flipped the phone closed, face the very picture of shock. "Uh," he said. "No offense, but you haven't suddenly begun participating in weird Lovecraftian rituals that necessitate the consumption of human screams, have you?

It was now impossible to tell where Axel's face ended and his hair began. "No," he said. "No, I have not."

At that moment, the buzz of a cell phone vibrating sounded through Riku's pocket. It also said Caller Unknown. He frowned and dug his cell phone out of the mess of candy wrappers and post-it notes, flipping it open. "All right," he said. "You have ten seconds to tell me how you got our numbers before I call the cops."

The person on the other end paused. And then, a small, timid voice said, "On the flyers your agents were passing around?"

Riku blinked. "Agents."

"Yeah," the voice said. "About the _Ars Arcanum_ question and answer session? They gave us your phone numbers and said you'd be taking calls for the next five hours?"

Riku stared at his phone. Then, very quickly, he flipped his cell phone shut and turned it off. "Axel," he said, voice wavering with fury. "You might want to turn off your-"

 _Ring._

Axel ripped his cell phone from Riku's hands and flung it open. "What," he yelled, "do you want?"

"Nothing now that you've blown my ear off," Reno said. "What the hell."

Axel slumped in relief, and he fumbled for the speakerphone. "Oi, Reno!" He laughed a little frantically. "Shit, you won't believe what happened. I was walking down the street with Riku, right, when all of a sudden my cell phone rang. So I opened it and these random people started-"

"-assuming you were a rockstar?" Reno finished, voice lilting in total delight.

Axel's insides froze. "Reno?" The words began quietly, but raised in volume with each subsequent syllable. "How the hell did you know that."

Reno chuckled, and the sound was the most infuriating thing Axel had ever heard. "Well, brother dearest," Reno said cheerfully. "After the chocobo fiasco this morning I figured that I wanted a pick-me-up. So I called Rude and we headed over to the SidneyPark, right? Well, you've got three guesses who we met there, and the first two don't count."

"Roxas," Axel whispered.

"Bingo! Tell our contestant what he's won!"

"You-" Axel began, but Reno didn't give him a chance to continue before he cut him off.

"Now, lemme tell you this, Axel," he laughed, "you sure know how to pick 'em. Blondie's pretty tough, for a kid. And you only think Sora's innocent. Half of this was his idea!"

Riku grabbed the cell phone from Axel's limp hands and shouted into it. "Half of what, traitor? Half of what was Sora's idea?!"

Reno laughed. "Well, you'd have to ask him, now wouldn't you? Sora," he called amusedly. "Someone wants to talk to you."

The phone clicked with static for a second, before Sora's voice flowed through the phone.

"Hello, Riku," he chirped. "How are you?"

"Sora," Riku growled, "what the hell did you do?"

Sora sighed, and for a moment Riku could almost imagine that the sound was regretful. "Sorry, Riku," Sora responded. "But justice is justice, right? An eye for an eye, y'know?"

"Sora, you bastard!" Riku shouted. "I told you that it was a misunderstanding! Why the hell would you-"

"Could you pass the phone to Axel, please?" Sora asked. "Roxas wants to talk to him. I'll see you around, Riku. If you could please let this end here, we'd be grateful."

Dumbstruck, Riku handed the phone to Axel, who grabbed it numbly.

"H-hello?" he rasped.

"Hello, Axel," Roxas's steady voice answered. "I believe that by now it has been made quite clear that Reno has decided to defect. Zexion, in addition, is obviously on our side. I'm sure you know why. We'll be waiting for a formal declaration of surrender at your convenience."

The click of the phone was the only indication the conversation had ended.

"My God," Riku murmured quietly. "It was him."

"That asshole," Axel muttered. "That filthy betrayer. Traitor of traitors. Bastard of bastards. Flea-bitten-"

Axel's phone rung once more. This time with a ring tone that was decidedly different from his normally cheerful ring. In fact, it sounded oddly like a funeral march.

"Oh, my gosh," Axel whispered. "It's her."

With trembling fingers, he opened the phone.

"Hello, Axel darling," Elena said, her voice hard and decidedly not happy. "I just got off the phone with Kairi. She went to the mall today with that Olette girl and some of her other friends. Remember? You should. You were supposed to drive them there."

"Ah," Axel said, laughing nervously. "About that."

"They managed to get there on their own power eventually," Elena continued, brusquely cutting him off, "no thanks to you. They wanted to go watch that new Bixar movie, you know. Unfortunately, in the middle of lunch, a very interesting flyer found its way into Kairi's hands, emblazoned with a very interesting phone number, and she just had to rush home and show me."

Axel made a sound like a dying exhaust pipe, and prayed to the high heavens for mercy.

"Now, Axel, love," Elena whispered, her voice serious and quite frankly the most terrifying thing he'd ever heard. "I'm only going to say this once, so I'd advise you to pay attention." Her voice lowered three octaves. "I don't know who the hell you pissed off, but stop it. Stop it right now."

And with that, Elena hung up.

"I…I have to go home," Axel said when he'd recovered from his daze. "I think Mom's actually gonna kill me, this time."

Riku shrugged and pointed at a house twenty feet away. "Well, here we are. We've been walking around in circles for the past hour."

The pair sighed and walked across the road, through the driveway, up the stairs, and onto the porch. And then they paused.

Hundreds of black-and-white flyers were littered across the front porch and splayed across the lawn chairs. Haltingly, Riku bent over and picked one up.

'ARS ARCANUM,' The flyer proudly proclaimed. 'Taking your phone calls for the next six hours! Or forever, because these are their personal cell phones and they'd be more than happy to accept marriage requests for the rest of their lives!'

They stared. And stared. And tried to convince themselves their parents wouldn't be that mad about having to switch numbers. And stared. And then Axel happened to look up.

There, taped to the front door, was a recently developed Polaroid. A clearly rushed photo taken with laughable skill. Neither Axel nor Riku were laughing, however.

There was Demyx, holding a peace-sign towards the camera. Zexion, who was resting one hand on Demyx's shoulder and smirking. Roxas, grinning triumphantly and holding one hand outstretched over his head. Rude, standing serene in the background. Sora, waving.

And then there was Reno. Reno, who was grinning at the camera. Reno, whose head was thrown back. Reno, who had one arm slung all-too-casually around Roxas's shoulders, and whose photographic self was staring straight at Axel with a decidedly challenging look in his eye.

His brother. Reno. Flesh of his flesh. Blood of his blood. Born of the same loins.

Reno. With one arm around Roxas's shoulders.

"Hey, Axel?" Riku asked curiously. "You okay over there?"

Behind them, every single flyer spontaneously combusted.


	9. Chapter 7: Hell Yeah!

******Chapter Seven: Hell Yeah!**

Pride, as the most serious of the seven deadly sins, is an iffy concept. So is forgiveness, love, and letting go of past misdeeds done to your chocobos in order to move forward together towards a better, brighter future.

Cloud Strife, as the owner of these woebegone chocobos, was currently having to deal with all of the above. He was not happy about it. He illustrated this by sighing morosely, raising a fist, and knocking once on a bright red door which, as the reader may surmise, belonged to one Leon Leonhart, who was at that moment stepping out of the shower. Cloud, obviously, did not know that. So he knocked. And when, ten seconds later, there was still no answer, he knocked again. And again. And again and again, because let it never be said that Cloud Strife gave up easily.

The door opened, and:

"I thought I told you to get out of my sight, Riku," a half-naked, wan, very wet Leon Leonhart began. Needless to say, when the man standing on the front porch turned out not to be his adopted delinquent of a son, but the reason said son was currently sleeping with the dogs, he came to an abrupt halt, released a garbled sort of moan, and disappeared inside his home, clutching his towel to his waist.

"Sorry," Leon said, panic _almost_ invisible in his voice. "Come in and give me a minute. I'll be right there."

Cloud raised an eyebrow and stepped past the threshold and into the foyer, wondering whether all of the Leonharts had a tendency towards spectacular overreaction. He gave the tidy room a cursory once-over and plopped himself down upon the sofa, doing his level best not to fidget. After all, his task was simple. Nothing to stress over. All he had to do was apologize, maybe invite them over for dinner sometime, and then mosey on out of there.

A few seconds later, a fully-dressed Leon came trotting down the stairs, still doing up the last buttons on his shirt. "I'm sorry," he said. "I thought you were my son. You can guess I'm not all that-" He bit his lip, then sighed, and took a seat. "I apologize for Riku's behavior this morning," he said. "I'm sure that he meant no harm, but it was still the wrong thing to do. If you want, I'll help you wash them off."

"Don't bother," Cloud said curtly. "I spent the morning hosing down the entire flock."

Leon hid a wince. "Oh."

Cloud sighed, and wished that apologies came with instruction manuals. "Look," he said, running a hand through jagged spikes. "Don't worry about anything. It wasn't your fault. I'm sorry for the way my cousins behaved yesterday, too. I'd just like to say this: I don't know what any of the kids are up to, and I only barely care. I'll mediate on my side if I have to, just like you'll probably mediate on yours. I've been living with the three of them long enough to know how much I should put up with before I throw them to the wolves, so I'm not going to worry about it. Just tell your side of the mess that the pets stay out of this. I don't much give a shit what goes on outside of that."

And with that, he then took a step back.

Leon reached out and grabbed him by the arm.

Cloud stilled faster than he would have if he'd expected it. If he'd expected it, he'd have gone motionless slowly, by degrees. He would have had enough time to talk his body through appropriately non-antagonistic reactions. But Leon had moved quicker than Cloud had thought he would. That meant that Cloud went very still very quickly.

Cloud looked up, eyes not exactly narrow, but focused in a way that he hadn't been during their entire conversation. "Sorry," he said. "Was there something else."

Leon took a long time to respond. Longer than he might have at any other time, anyway, as he was currently trying to get his head to stop spinning like a merry-go-round. His hands felt clammy, and his stomach was pulsing with something that felt a lot like nausea. Odd, how easy it was to mix that up with lust.

"I'll stay away from your chocobos," Leon said. "You don't have to worry about that."

Cloud kept himself still. "Thanks," he said. "But that's not a reason to grab onto me."

Leon's mouth twitched strangely, like he was trying very hard not to grimace or frown. Slowly, as if he were prying his fingers away, he let go. "I don't want you mad."

Cloud debated whether it would be worth it to take a step back. His skull had begun to feel oddly heady. A bit like he'd too much to drink. "I'm not going to join them in their crusade against whatever the hell they're crusading against," he said. "Tifa's my friend."

"That's not what I mean."

"Then explain it to me," Cloud said. "Because I don't think I'm understanding why this is a conversation we have to have with you standing two inches away from me."

In another world, Leon wouldn't have responded to that. A few years ago, he wouldn't have responded to that. Leon was...it wasn't that he was repressed. It wasn't even that he was emotionally unavailable. Both of the above were true to some extent, although less so now that he was a surrogate father. It was just that Leon was intelligent. He was smart enough to know that it didn't do to risk something you had over something you probably never would. But it had been a difficult few days. That made self-control a hard thing to possess.

Leon opened his mouth. And then, before he quite knew what he was doing, he kissed him.

For a single moment, with the silky blond strands of Cloud's hair brushing against his cheek, and the slightly less silky feel of Cloud's lips moving under his, Leon forgot to breathe.

Then Cloud chomped his lips to bits.

Leon yelped and leapt backwards, cupping his mouth protectively. "Wha' th'ell wa'-"

Cloud didn't give him a chance to continue before he lifted a hand and slammed him back against the wall. He took a few seconds to respond. "I think," he said, voice astonishingly level but for the slight shake at the end of each word, "you know damn well what that was."

Leon shut his mouth. Cloud watched him from under carefully blank eyes. "Give me an explanation," he said.

Leon tipped his chin up and carefully paid no attention to the tiny voice in his head that had started screaming insults at himself. "Think I made it pretty obvious."

"So it was a joke," Cloud said.

"No."

"Yeah," Cloud said. "I think it was a joke."

"Strife."

"I'm sure it was a joke," Cloud said. "Because that's the only excuse I can come up with for why my best friend's husband just planted one on me ten minutes after his wife sent me over here to make peace."

"Well," Leon said, feeling somewhat hysterical, "we could be swingers."

"Tifa Lockhart is not a swinger," Cloud hissed. "Tifa Lockhart would have told me if she were a swinger, and she would have told me if her husband was a swinger, and she definitely would have told me if she wanted to suddenly add me to her sex life, and I am not going to sit here while her husband makes passes at me when-"

"Tifa and I are getting a divorce."

It wasn't until Leon saw Cloud's eyes go wide that Leon realized what he'd said, and also realized it was probably true.

 _One day_ , the voice inside him said. _One fucking day_.

But that was a lie.

"Nothing's set in stone," Leon continued. "We're talking. We're going to keep talking. But we didn't marry each other out of passion. There were reasons, and they were good ones, but it wasn't because we were in love. So we talked about it. She talked about it. We're going to get a divorce."

Cloud stayed quiet long enough that Leon almost thought he'd have to continue. Before he could keep talking, though, Cloud said, "no."

"That's not really your decision," Leon said. "Given that you're not the one married to her, and you haven't talked to her in years."

If Cloud heard the reflexive insult there, he made no sign of it. "You just moved," he said.

Leon kept quiet.

"You've been married for three years," Cloud said. "If it wasn't out of love, fine. It's not my marriage. Fine. But you just moved here. The two of you left your home in the middle of the city and moved here. She wouldn't have come if you were going to divorce. She wouldn't have done that. She would have let you go."

Leon still said nothing.

"So tell me how that works," Cloud said. "Tell me how Tifa Lockhart uproots her life for the sake of a guy she's going to divorce and two kids who aren't actually hers. Because either I'm missing something or you're lying, and in either case I'm not going to-"

Leon would have kept quiet. If it had been anyone but Cloud, I swear he would have.

"We promised," Leon interrupted. "If we ever found someone else, we promised we'd let each other go."

Cloud went very still. Viciously, Leon felt grateful.

"Say that again," Cloud said. "So there's no way I can misunderstand."

Leon paused. Exhaled.

"I loved you," he said. "A long time ago. I don't think you ever knew."

Cloud fell silent.

And then he punched Leon across the face, spun on his heels and ran, banging the front door loudly behind him.

Five minutes later, Leon sat down. "Well," he said flatly to the empty house. "That could have gone a lot worse."

"Sorry about earlier," Demyx said. It was a few hours later. Sora and Roxas had left to go back home. Reno and Rude had left to wherever the hell could handle Reno and Rude. But Demyx and Zexion had stayed at the SidneyPark, and they meandered down the streets, while Demyx idly sucked on a popsicle and Zexion categorically did not stare, and most definitely did not draw phallic comparisons with long odes to Freud. (Which, obviously, means that he did, but no one had to know.) "Calling you a war monger was going a little far."

Zexion shrugged, and began cataloguing how much of his body's current state (sweaty palms; dry mouth; careful, Zexion, better watch the pants!) was probably the result of his companion deep-throating a substitute dick. "I didn't care."

"Yeah, you did," Demyx said. "I could see it all over your face."

 _That wasn't because you called me a war monger,_ Zexion would have said, if he were at all the type of person who said the first thing that popped into his head. Instead he shrugged again. "You wouldn't be wrong. I don't often get along well enough with my brother to resist the desire to make his life a little more difficult."

"You should," Demyx said. "Otherwise they get back at you when you least expect it, and one day you wake up to realize that your vintage sitar has been smashed to pieces on the gravel and also your goldfish is dead."

Zexion blinked. "They killed your goldfish?"

"Nah," Demyx said. "I forgot to change the water. But the timing really made my day a lot worse."

Zexion studied him. "I'm trying very hard to work out whether that was a joke."

"Yeah," Demyx said. "I get that a lot." He shoved most of the popsicle in his mouth. "Tell me about where you used to live."

It took a moment for Zexion to stop being thoroughly distracted enough to process the request. "It's Hollow Bastion. You've been to Hollow Bastion."

"Sure," Demyx said. "But I've never lived there. It's different when you're just visiting the city to get something to eat. Anyway, we were on the Islands before this. Hollow Bastion's still big enough to me for it to be an entirely different world."

Zexion tore himself away from the sight of Demyx lapping up melted popsicle from his fingers (there was something distressing about how an action could be so simultaneously arousing and disgusting at the same time) to consider. "I didn't like it," he said at last.

"Don't like the city?"

"I don't like people," Zexion said, and felt only mildly chagrined that he'd actually said that aloud. "Things were convenient there. It was easy to find people who acted like me. I was content enough. But that doesn't mean I enjoyed myself."

Demyx made a noise in his throat, tossing the popsicle stick into a trashcan. "And you think you'll enjoy yourself here?"

Zexion thought about the very many ways he could answer that. And then he said, "I like one of my neighbors."

Demyx opened his mouth as if to respond, but closed it without saying anything. He turned towards Zexion, watching him silently long enough that Zexion began wondering, quite distantly, whether this was how other people felt when Zexion looked at them.

"You know my brothers are joking when they imply that you like me," Demyx said.

Zexion didn't think that Roxas was joking. "That wasn't how I meant the statement."

"I didn't think it was," Demyx said. "The two statements were mostly unrelated. I just figured I'd put that out there."

"It would make more sense if you'd said it the other way around then," Zexion said. "' _My brothers are joking when they imply that_ _ **I**_ _like_ _ **you**_ _._ ' Otherwise it feels as if you're speaking for me, and that's not something I think anyone should ever do."

"Because they'd be wrong?"

"Because it's rude," Zexion said. "And whether they would be right or wrong matters less to me than that."

Demyx stayed quiet a few moments. Then he said, "I wouldn't actually marry you for concert tickets."

Zexion blinked slowly. "I feel like I'm missing the context in that sentence."

"Inside joke," Demyx said. "The point is, I've known you for, like, two days. Given the fact that said two days have included being kidnapped-"

"You weren't kidnapped."

"-being mortally wounded-"

"You also weren't mortally wounded."

"-and engaging in what probably counts as a few minor misdemeanors, I'd say that they've been a pretty awesome two days. But they've still only been two days. I'm not marrying anyone, even for concert tickets, after two days."

Zexion stared at him, unblinking. "I didn't ask you to."

"So if I asked you why you've spent the last ten minutes watching me deep throat a popsicle," Demyx said, "the answer would definitely be something along the lines of ' _because I'm totally disgusted by you_.'"

Zexion opened his mouth, discovered that for the first time in his life he honestly had nothing to say, and then closed it.

"Not judging," Demyx said. "If I were standing next to someone sticking six inches of creamsicle down their esophagus, I'd probably stare too. But you were pretty fixated. I think I bruised my throat."

It was safe to say that a few days ago, when he'd first decided that the hapless blond holding his shin and hopping to and fro interested him, he had not exactly anticipated this. Zexion spent a long ten seconds wondering where, exactly, he had gone so wrong that someone could actually accuse him of voyeurism. Then, carefully, "Are you an exhibitionist?"

"Wow," Demyx said. "That's really forward."

"You spent the last ten minutes fellating a popsicle," Zexion said. "I don't think you have any right to talk."

"I was running an experiment," Demyx said airily. "' _Is my next door neighbor interested in me_.'"

"And being socially inappropriate was a better idea than asking?"

"I didn't think you'd answer," Demyx said. "Also it was fun. Are you?"

Not for the first time since the conversation had begun, Zexion felt somewhat off-kilter. "Am I what?"

"Interested in me."

"I thought you were sure I wasn't going to answer."

" _Pre_ -deep throating I was sure you weren't going to answer," Demyx said. "But I've knocked you off-balance now. Come on."

Zexion kept quiet for a few seconds after that. Then he said, "yes."

Demyx blinked. "What."

"Yes," Zexion said. "I am."

Demyx opened his mouth, then closed it. "What?"

"Were you expecting a different answer?" Zexion asked.

"Yes," Demyx said. "I thought it was a joke."

"It wasn't," Zexion said. "But interested only means interested. It does not mean that I have any inclination toward asking something of you."

Demyx spent a half minute trying to figure out what that meant before he realized that Zexion had left him behind.

He took off after him.

"You should have seen him, Naminé. He just ran inside and up to his room. Sora tried to ask him what was wrong, and Cloud snapped at him. Like, with an attitude. At Sora. And you know Sora. He just stood there all hurt and shocked and then locked himself in our room."

The soft, feminine voice on the other side of the phone sighed. "And that's why you're calling me from the bathroom?"

"I'm calling you from the bathroom because my brother is distraught," Roxas mumbled.

Naminé laughed. "I know. Cheer up. At least he's not upset right now because of Riku!"

When complete and utter silence followed this statement, Naminé winced in realization. Oops.

"I am not," Roxas whispered softly, "going to talk about Riku."

"Funny," Naminé said. "That's what you told me yesterday, before you spent the next six hours on the phone yesterday talking about Riku."

"Riku is a filthy pervert and Axel is no better," Roxas said. "I hate them."

Naminé sighed. She loved Roxas like a brother, and all she wanted was the best for him. They'd been best friends for ages, and it was her dearest wish to see the boy settled down with a nice person in the house beside hers. She'd been heartbroken when he'd moved away. But as much as she loved him, she had to admit: the boy got a bit too carried away sometimes. I mean, really. Like a chocobo could be blackmailed into instigating a massive lapdance session. As Roxas's best friend of ten years and pen pal of almost two, she really should try to calm him down.

"Hey, what about that friend of yours-Hayner?" she asked. "You two always go paint-balling together, right? If I know you, I'm sure you're dying for a bit of target practice."

On the other hand, Naminé was also believed that love tended to arrive from the strangest places, and if she'd been listening correctly, this Axel certainly seemed like he'd be at home in one.

Roxas smiled. "Naminé, do I ever miss you."

A thousand miles away, Naminé smiled and shot a glance to a photo lying on her desk . It was her favorite: one of the only ones that featured the entire group. There were Sora and Demyx, splashing each other in the waves. Wakka and Lulu, locked in eternal motion as they lobbed a volleyball between them. Zidane and Garnet and Baku, playing tag in the sand. And Roxas in the foreground, with one arm slung around her shoulders, smiling at the camera more sweetly than she could ever remember seeing him.

Naminé laughed to herself. Those had been the days: the whole group together, and happy. They were over now, but not forgotten. They'd never be forgotten.

And hey-if she had anything to say about it (and, being the best friend, she did) there would be many more memories to make. Roxas was practically her twin soul, after all; if anyone was invested in his happiness, it was she.

"You just concentrate on your revenge plots, Roxas, and the rest will work itself out. And who knows-you may find that these new boys aren't so bad once you get to know them."

And, ignoring Roxas's outraged sputters, she hung up.

Sora sighed. Then sighed again. And once more, for good measure. Because, as cliché as it sounded, Sora was, at heart, just a sensitive guy. A sensitive guy who'd been verbally slapped by his jerk of an older cousin. A jerk of an older cousin who'd disappeared into his room a full hour earlier, angry and hurt and damned-well near tears. And, because Sora was just a sensitive guy, he was inclined to forgive any indignities performed against his person by said older cousin as he tried to figure out what the hell could have gone so wrong at the Leonhart household that Cloud had fled back home an emotional wreck.

"Cloud?" Sora called through the bedroom door. "Cloud? Look, I'm sorry. I know that you don't want to talk with anybody right now, but I need to know that you're okay in there." He paused, and tapped on the door. "Please? Can you come out now, Cloud?"

There was only silence. Sora frowned. "Cloud? Look, I'm begging you. Come out, and you don't have to talk if you don't want to."

Silence. Vein throb.

"Cloud. I don't want to ask you again. This is for your own good. Now, come outside this instant, and when Demyx comes home I'll ask him to bake you something. So get out here."

More silence. Somewhere deep within Sora's body, an artery exploded.

"Cloud, get your punk ass outside or I'll shave your head while you sleep! So come out NOW."

The moment he finished his tirade, someone coughed lightly behind him. "I'm out."

Sora yipped in shock and spun around, clutching his heart. "When did-"

"Half an hour ago," Cloud said. "You were too busy wallowing in your own misery to notice."

"I am a ball of sunshine," Sora hissed.

"Says the boy who spent the last hour listening to sad music and knocking his head against the wall," Roxas called from behind the closed bathroom door.

"You called a girl in the bathroom," Sora bellowed, and then proceeded to ignore Roxas's muffled squawk. "Cloud. You know you can talk to us, right?"

Cloud did not know that. The only thing that Cloud knew was that if he let Sora get a foothold on his emotions it would take only three hours before Sora had the whole household holding hands in the living room and singing _Kumbaya_. So Cloud did the only thing he could possibly do.

"Oh look Demyx dragged the neighbor home," he said, and disappeared into his bedroom.

"So you see," Demyx said, "if you go out with me your future will be filled with wealth and success."

Zexion sighed, and continued making his way to his house. He could see it in the distance now. "I don't know how this happened," he muttered. "Where did things go so wrong."

"Somewhere around the place where you told me you were interested but still wouldn't go out with me," Demyx said primly.

Zexion refrained from mentioning that that hadn't exactly been what he'd said. "You were irritating me."

"I was teasing you," Demyx said.

"There's not much of a difference."

"There is a _world_ of difference," Demyx said. "If I were trying to irritate you, you would know it."

"I think someone needs to teach you about the difference between actuality and intent."

"I vote you," Demyx said. "You teach me."

Zexion groaned and rubbed at his temples. "I thought you didn't actually want to go out with me."

"I never said that," Demyx said. "What I said was that my brothers were mostly joking when they said that they thought you wanted to go out with me, and that I was teasing when I was implying that I would be okay with you wanting to go out with me. But teasing doesn't actually mean I wasn't serious."

"I think that actually is what it means."

"The point is," Demyx finished, "I never actually said that I wasn't amenable to the suggestion. You just assumed."

Zexion stared at him. "Amenable," he said at last.

"Enthusiastic about?"

Zexion peered at him from behind narrowed eyes. " _Two days._ "

Demyx grinned at him. "You bought me concert tickets. It was love at first sight."

Zexion watched him quietly. And then he leaned in.

Two stories above him, Sora launched himself from his place at the window where he and his brother had been watching, and tackled a furious, about-to-go-break-them-up Roxas to the floor.

Then dry lips pressed themselves chastely against Demyx's cheek.

Demyx blinked. "What."

Zexion leaned back, already on his way to his own door. "I'm not kissing you on the mouth on the first date," Zexion said.

"Why not?"

Zexion shrugged. "Partly because I don't like creamsicles. But mostly because your brothers were watching, and unlike you, I'm not an exhibitionist."

Demyx squawked and glared up at the shifting curtains on the second floor. "So," he said, still frowning up. "If I hadn't been eating creamsicles, and if they hadn't been watching?"

"Then we could have talked about it," Zexion said. "For now, you'll have to wait."

And then he disappeared inside his house.

Not two seconds later, Sora and Roxas all-but tumbled down the steps and came to a halt directly in front of a mildly flabbergasted Demyx. Almost simultaneously, they opened their mouths.

"What," they said, "the hell was that?"

Demyx looked at the door that had just closed, and blinked. "You know what," he said. "I don't actually know."

Zexion, being Zexion, did not skip down the driveway while whistling a happy tune the minute he'd left Demyx's earshot. He walked calmly, idly nudging the puppies out of the way as he climbed up the porch. He didn't even fumble the keys. He pulled them out in a very tranquil manner, and opened the door.

Then his younger brother and one best friend of a younger brother beset him with all the rage of a thousand Dalmatians out for the blood of a certain Ms. de Vil, and just like that, the peace and quiet was dispelled.

"Traitor! I can't believe you sold out your own brother for the enemy! You make me sick-"

"I've known you for years, Zexy, and now you just go and pull something like this-"

"What happened to the older brother who swore he'd never let anyone's microbes touch his-"

"We had to change our phone numbers, you dick-"

"I hate you, I hate you, I hate you-"

Zexion sighed, and lifted two fingers. "One," he said. "I didn't sell anyone out. It's impossible to betray someone unless there was loyalty in the first place. Given that there wasn't, I think you'll find that your reasoning is flawed."

"You're my brother, you d-"

"And two," Zexion said. "The pair of you are some of the largest idiots I've ever met in my life, but I find myself stuck with you. There's nothing I can do about that. But I have priorities. Romance is somewhere between _monthly haircuts_ and _writing critical film reviews._ So it should say something that between a neighbor I barely know and the two of you, I do not choose you."

And with that, Zexion turned on his heels and headed up the stairs.

There was silence in the Leonhart household for upwards of four minutes. When it was finally broken, a single word drifted through the air, muttered simultaneously by two very irritated young delinquents.

"Damn."


	10. Chapter 8: Oh Really?

**Chapter Eight: Oh Really?**

Reflect, for one moment, on how many problems have had their roots-flimsy though they may be-in jealousy. There's Troy, where King Menelaus started a war that would kill thousands because his wife was porking some Trojan prince. There's the Persian king Shahryar, who started killing a virgin a night because he caught the good Queen with another man (the fact that they were plotting to kill him, of course, was an added incentive). And I have it on very good authority (or, more precisely, no authority at all, but that's the price we pay for unreliable narration) that in a past lifetime, a certain General only went murderous because he fell prey to the mistaken belief that his boyfriend was screwing around with his SOLDIER best friend.

As you can see, very few good things-and a hell of a lot of bad ones-have been spawned of jealousy. And when one is a red-headed pyromaniac who likes to play with chakram, jealousy is never safe. For those around you, that is. So as Reno stepped out of his car and began walking towards the house, whistling a happy tune all the while, Axel did the only thing he could do. He pounced.

Reno, to be fair, was neither omniscient nor Miss Cleo. He was, however, reasonably intelligent. Therefore, when his younger brother launched himself from their second story window in a desperate attempt to tackle him, Reno didn't even have to look up; he side-stepped the falling red-head, open the door, and continued inside.

"Reno, you bastard," Axel spluttered from around a mouthful of mud. "I could have broken something."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Reno called from inside their house. "Maybe if you waited for me to walk inside before you tried to maul me, you'd actually get somewhere."

Axel clambered to his feet, swaggering inside with a decidedly angry limp. "Where's the fun in that? How dramatic is waiting?"

"About as dramatic as falling on your face in front of the neighbors." He paused and tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Or do they call that ironic? Comedic?"

Axel shook his head and grabbed the bottle of juice. "No, I think it's anti-climactic."

Reno grinned and ruffled Axel's hair. "There ya go. Now, I'm off to work. Don't stay up too late, yo."

"Like I'm falling for that. We're not finished talking, weasel."

Reno paused at the doorway and furrowed his brow in faux confusion. "It's not my fault you have a short attention span. Though, I must say, I was betting myself that you'd let me walk out the door before you figured out what was going on."

"Shut up, asshole," he said, frowning, and yanked the ponytail Reno was still struggling to re-grow. "Now, explain to me exactly what the fuck you were thinking when you defected from our side, traitor."

Reno grinned. "I don't remember actually thinking. I was more busy trying to stop Blondie from committing an act he'd regret."

"I'm the only one who's allowed to call Roxas Blondie. If you really feel the urge to mention him, you may refer to him as That Bastard Strife. Or Axel's Future Spouse. Whichever."

"Please," Reno said, snorting. "You're so full of it. Roxas can barely stand you. The only person on this good green Earth he hates more than you is Riku, and that's saying something. In fact, I think he considers you below hate. Riku's The Enemy. You're just The Enemy's lackey."

"I feel I deserve at least _right hand man_ ," Axel grumbled.

"Whatever you want," Reno said. "Just remember that right now you're barely even on his radar. Which isn't that big a deal, actually?" He yawned, frowning at whatever the hell was under his fingernails (blood. It was blood). "It's not like you love the kid, right?"

Axel froze.

Then he squinted.

"I don't know why people keep having to say this," he said. "But: we've literally known them for _one day_."

"Then?"

Axel shrugged. "I like him. He's interesting. He's making this summer more fun than I've had in years. And yeah, I like his face. But that's about it. Still don't want you talking to him until I've managed to convince him I'm not Satan incarnate, though."

"Wasn't planning on doing otherwise," Reno said, snorting. "He's sixteen."

"Who is?"

Axel and Reno glanced around. Kairi stood there, arms akimbo. "Come on. Who are we talking about?"

"Friend of mine," Axel said. "He's a dick."

"He'd have to be, to get along with you," Kairi said. She hopped onto the couch, leaning forward. "Friend have a name?"

"Roxas," Axel said. "For the record, you're not allowed to associate with him either."

Kairi narrowed her eyes. "That'll be pretty hard," she said, "given that he's the brother of my best friend."

Axel and Reno stared.

Kairi folded her arms across her chest. "A year and a half ago, I came home and told you that a family had moved in across town, and one of the boys-Sora-was my age. You smiled and nodded. A year ago, I came home and told you that I thought Sora was the best thing since string cheese. You smiled and nodded. Six months ago, I came home and told you that I'd decided Sora and I would be better off as friends. You smiled and nodded." She narrowed her eyes and pointed an accusing finger at her older brothers. "I've brought him over to the house at least ten times. Mom and Dad have both met him! I took him to Neku's wedding."

The two older brothers shot each other uneasy looks and laughed nervously. "It's not like we don't listen to you, Kairi," Reno said.

"Whatever," Kairi huffed, clambering to her feet and dusting herself off. "I don't know everything that's going on. Knowing the two of you, it probably involves mass property damage. But Roxas is important to me. All the Strife boys are important to me. And I know you well enough to know that you're almost definitely up to no good. So just be kind to him, all right? I don't want to see you destroying another friendship just because you don't know how to properly think."

"I'm not-"

"Oh, be quiet, Axel," she sighed, smiling helplessly. "I'm your sister. I know you better than you do. I'm just saying. You and Roxas are precious to me, and if you want to be friends with him, you have my support. Which is convenient, because I was actually on my way to visit Sora myself. Do you want me to leave a message?"

Axel watched her. "No," he said at length. "I'm fine."

"Whatever you want," Kairi said, and leaned forward to kiss her two brothers good-bye. "Be good boys, all right? Or I'll pickle your entrails myself."

And with that, she disappeared.

Reno sighed and shrugged on his coat. "Sometimes I think our family probably isn't normal."

Blonds, as Demyx was quickly beginning to believe, did not have more fun. In fact, if you used Roxas, Cloud, and himself as examples, you could almost say that all blonds everywhere were cursed. Some more so than others.

"Mom!" Sora sang from his seat on the banister. "You're home!"

Rinoa raised a delicate eyebrow. "Thank you, Sora. I really hadn't realized."

"And you have no idea what happened while you were gone!" Sora said.

Demyx buried his face in his hands and groaned. He managed to block out whatever Sora said in the next few minutes. He did not, however, manage to block out the words _future gynecologist,_ _made out,_ and _right in front of our home._

Rinoa squinted at Sora. Then she squinted at Demyx. Then she said, "I need a chair."

Demyx gaped, and spun around to face Sora. "Do you see what you did! She's having a nervous breakdown!"

"I'm not having a nervous breakdown," Rinoa said. "I just need a chair."

"I was just telling the truth!" Sora wailed. "I didn't know it would upset her!"

"Oh, I'm not upset," Rinoa said, fanning herself. "I'm not upset at all. Where's that chair?"

"See?" Demyx cried. "She's going to start crying!"

"Oh, I'm not crying," Rinoa said. "Not at all. Demyx, baby, pass me that box of napkins."

"What sin did I commit to deserve this?" Demyx moaned.

"You offered your hand in marriage for concert tickets," Sora informed him.

"I didn't offered my hand in marriage for concert tickets," Demyx said. "I offered my hand in marriage for sitar lessons. I didn't give him anything for the concert tickets!"

Rinoa swayed on her feet. Sora went to find a chair.

"I don't see why this is that big a deal," Demyx said, after Rinoa had been safely seated. "You've never cared who I went out with before." Sora opened his mouth. "I'm talking about Mom. Not the two of you."

"No one else you ever went out with was possibly going to spend the rest of their lives examining vaginas," Rinoa said, and gamely ignored Demyx's ' _your first guess was surgeon!_ ' "Also," she continued, in an absent mutter, too quiet for Demyx to hear over the sound of his outrage, "none of the others were ever vicious enough to keep you interested."

Demyx didn't hear. But Sora did. He shut his mouth for a second, darting his gaze a tad worriedly between his mother and brother. And then he forced a laugh. "Don't worry about it," he said, warm and getting warmer with every passing word. "Look, it'll all work out in the end, okay? You just keep your chin up and do what feels right."

"Truer words were never spoken," a cheerful voice said from behind them.

Sora spun around. "Kairi!" he called, waving happily. "What's up?"

Kairi laughed and twined her fingers behind her back. "Not much. Mostly I just wanted to visit. Although if Roxas is here, I could probably stand to talk to him, too."

Sora flinched.

"Uh," he said. "Roxas?"

"Yeah," Kairi said. "It's not a big deal? My brother was just talking about him earlier, and it made me curious about what was going on. Where is he?"

"Yes, where is Roxas?" Rinoa asked, still fanning herself. "Cloud should be at work by now, but Roxas is normally here for Demyx-baiting."

Sora's giggles took on a decidedly edgy tinge. "Well…" he said. "What you have to understand is this: yes, we completely owned Riku and Axel with the whole Ars phone interview deal. But Roxas feels that a little bit of extra…persuasion…would do the Leonharts well."

Kairi gasped. "Wait…you were the ones handing out those flyers at the mall?"

"What kind of persuasion, exactly, are you referring to?" Rinoa asked, sitting up and no longer looking like she was about to burst into tears every time she looked at her eldest son.

"Hayner's here," Demyx muttered from his spot on the couch. "Does that answer your question?"

Rinoa frowned. "Oh." And then her eyes widened. "Oh!"

A pause. Then:

"Uh…guys?" Kairi asked haltingly. "Should I be worried?"

Reno flung open the back doors of Jenova BioTech and sauntered in, tapping his night stick absentmindedly against his shoulder. "Oi! Rude!" he shouted. "Are you here yet?"

"Rude arrived almost an hour ago," a soft, silky voice answered. Its owner leaned against the wall, flipping the pages of a clipboard. "On time, I might add. Would you like to tell me why, exactly, my most prized guard is nearly an hour late, especially on the day we're supposed to close the deal with Cid Highwind?"

Reno grinned and twirled his stick like a baton. "Do you wanna sit down, boss?" he asked, motioning towards a chair. Sephiroth narrowed his eyes.

"No. Just summarize."

"Revenge," Reno said. "And love at first sight, I guess, but mostly just revenge."

Sephiroth raised his eyebrows. "And this is why you were late?"

Reno grinned. "Yup."

"Ah." Sephiroth shrugged, and pushed his long strands of hair out of his face. "I hope these people paid you for the hour, then. You're not getting anything from me."

Reno faked a faint. When Sephiroth most decidedly did not rush to catch him, he groaned. "C'mon, Boss! I was aiding the Strife brothers in the noble quest for justice! You should be paying me overtime for that!" He laughed, but trailed off when he saw Sephiroth's face.

"What did you say?" Sephiroth asked, his voice some odd combination of deadly and triumphant in a way Reno had never heard before, and hoped he'd never hear again.

"Nothing," Reno gulped. "I didn't say anything. I didn't even speak."

"You did, Reno," Sephiroth said. He leaned forward until Reno could see every one of his white, white teeth, and smiled.

"Did you say Strife?"

"And then you chopped it in half?"

"And then I chopped it in half," Tifa said. She sighed, climbing up the steps of the Leonhart porch. "D'you think we've given them enough time?"

Yuffie rolled her eyes and shoved her small hands into large pockets. "It's been five hours. Even if Cloud and Leon did settle their differences-unlikely, as I've never met two people with fewer social skills than those idiots-I'm sure they're done by now."

"And if they're not, they'll just have to wait," Tifa said, unlocking the door. "I want back in my house."

And so the three girls opened the front door of the Leonhart household and stepped inside.

Tifa winced and narrowed her eyes. "It's so dark," she whispered. "I wonder why all the lights are turned off."

"Maybe they left?" Yuffie whispered back.

"No," Aerith said. "Both of their cars are still outside. Ah," she said, and snapped the lights on. "Here."

The first floor was empty, living room and kitchen and bedrooms sitting silent and dark. Tifa furrowed her brow and walked towards the staircase, taking a single step up. "Leon?" she called. "Hey? Are you okay?"

No one answered. Tifa took another step up the stairs. "Leon? Would you please answer me?"

"Only if you turn off the light," Leon said quietly, his voice echoing down the stairs.

The three women started in surprise, but Aerith automatically moved to switch off the lights. Slowly, they began climbing the steps.

"What's wrong, Leon?" Tifa called hesitatingly. "Do you feel sick?"

There was a strangled snort from above, and the girls shot each other worried glances. "Not really," Leon murmured, appearing at the top of the stairs. Slowly, he descended and came to a rest before them, nodding once before he pushed past them and took a seat on the living room couch. "But I have a horrible headache and the lights weren't helping."

Tifa frowned, coming forward to rest the back of her hand on Leon's forehead. "You don't have a fever," she muttered. "Are Riku and Zexion here?"

Leon closed his eyes and shook his head in the negative. "No. They came by for a little while earlier-I could hear Axel and Riku screaming at Zexion for some reason or another-but they all left a while ago. I don't know where they disappeared to."

"Well…that's a good thing, right? If they were here they'd only be aggravating your headache."

Leon shrugged. "It doesn't matter if they're here or not," he sighed. "I don't care."

Tifa bit her lip and glanced at her two friends. "Leon?" she asked, voice cracking slightly. "How was your…meeting…with Cloud? Did the two of you get everything sorted out?"

Leon laughed. "Yeah. Yeah, we got everything sorted out."

His wife bit her lower lip. "And? How did it go?"

"He came over and apologized. He said that he overreacted, and that he shouldn't have been so angry for something that wasn't my fault."

The girls glanced at each other warily. "That's good, right?"

"Sure," Leon snorted. "It was good. Everything was going good. Then he got up all into my personal space."

Aerith glanced at Tifa again, but there was nothing resembling pain there. She looked the way she always looked when faced with a problem she'd resolved to solve. Aerith wasn't sure whether it would be safe to take that at face value or not. "You kissed him."

"I told him I loved him once," Leon said. "So, worse."

Aerith and Yuffie both went still.

"The l-word," Yuffie said. "That's what you said."

"And then he punched me in the face," Leon said. "Still working out whether that was an overreaction or not. Leaning towards not."

Aerith opened her mouth, and closed it, then turned to meet Yuffie's gaze. Yuffie looked uncharacteristically serious. But Yuffie had been there for the worst of it. Yuffie knew. "It wasn't an overreaction," Aerith said. "I'm sorry. You couldn't have known."

Something in the lines of Leon's face shifted, and he lifted his face out of his hands. "Known?"

For a moment, he wasn't sure Aerith had heard him, so fretful did she seem. Then she sighed, wringing her hands together.

"I didn't think…I never thought that he would still feel that way," Aerith mumbled, almost to herself. She shot Yuffie a worried look and folded her lower lip between her teeth. "It's been years. I never thought he'd still..."

"He's never let anyone touch him since," Yuffie said. "I…I never realized. It never hit me. I got so used to seeing him alone, it never struck me that he's never taken anyone home."

"Wait," Tifa said, face drawn. "What are you two talking about?"

Aerith and Yuffie shot each other worried looks before they turned to gaze at Tifa and Leon. There was a solemn, sad quality about both of them that seemed out-of-place on them, and their lips were tight lines slashing across their pretty faces.

"Tifa," Aerith began softly, smoothing the folds of her pink dress in an almost nervous gesture. "Did you ever see Cloud date anyone in college?"

Tifa frowned and wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing absentmindedly. "No…not really. I used to invite him places, but he mostly said no. After a while, I just stopped thinking about it."

Aerith and Yuffie glanced at each other. Then, wordlessly, they seemed to reach an agreement.

"Look," Yuffie said, twiddling her thumbs together. "You're Cloud's friend. One of his best friends, so we'll trust you with this-"

"Not everything," Aerith said. "It's not ours to tell. But you'll never be able to stay with him unless you know at least the very basics, and that's not-it's not something I want to have happen to you."

"What is it?" Leon asked quietly, eyes narrowed. "What happened to Cloud?"

Aerith and Yuffie sighed.

"That's the thing, Leon," Aerith said. "We don't know."

Reno sat down heavily, his night stick lying forgotten by his feet.

"You and Cloud Strife?" he asked, voice wavering. "Seriously?"

"Yes," Sephiroth said. "For years."

Reno took a deep breath, shaking his head in confusion. "But why the hell did you tell me?" he asked, tugging on his short ponytail nervously. He felt oddly like a noose was hanging over his neck. One thing was for sure: the weight of the information he'd just received did nothing for his blood pressure. "Shit, I'm just your guard," he said, stumbling over the words. "I seriously didn't need to know this. You could have just…"

He trailed off, hoping for something: a cue, a nod…some sign that Sephiroth wasn't going to do something Reno would regret. This was just…

It was a fucking catastrophe, that's what it was. Reno wanted to run. "You want me to take you to him, don't you."

It wasn't a question. Sephiroth's smile widened, his only response.

"Shit," Reno said. He ran a shaking hand through his hair, and dearly wished he smoked. He'd cut off someone's right leg for a cigarette at the moment. "Fuck, Sephiroth. Why the hell did you have to bring me into this? I'm just your fucking security!"

"You work for Jenova," Sephiroth said, smiling placidly in an expression that sent something terrible running up Reno's spine. "President Shinra all but gave you to me to do as I will. And this is my will."

"Fuck," Reno repeated. He closed his eyes, and slumped.

"How long has this been going on, Sephiroth?" he asked finally. "Shit. Seriously. How fucking long?"

That beautiful face slackened for a minute, something in the lines of it going lax. Then the smile was back.

"Too long," Sephiroth answered. "Very, very long."

"When we were little," Yuffie began quietly, "We all used to live far away, in a town called Nibelheim. Cloud and Aerith and Zack and me. We were all friends-best friends. And Cloud…he was always surrounded by people. He's just one of those guys, y'know? The ones that can draw in admirers like a moth to a flame. The entire Strife family is like that.

"Life was nice, back then. I was still a kid when it happened - eight or nine, I think - so I don't remember much. But it used to be great. Cloud would baby-sit me, and Aerith and Zack would always play with me, and their other friends would come visit. I liked Barrett the best-he would swing me round and round, and he and Cloud argued sometimes, but you could tell they were really close.

"And then, one day, something happened. I don't know what. No one knows what. He came home and he was a wreck. Screaming, breaking things, locking himself in his room, a _wreck._ And then when that ended, he locked himself in his room, and ate nothing, and didn't come out for days. By the time he did, we had to have him hospitalized. He'd lost...so much weight." She closed here eyes, and exhaled.

"Please try to understand," she said, clasping her hands together tightly, begging for an unnecessary forgiveness. "We really tried to find out what was happening, we really did. But he wouldn't tell us, and Cloud's so stubborn…"

"We all came to visit him," Aerith murmured. "Every friend Cloud had ever made, every admirer he'd ever attracted. We all flooded his house. It was all the same. He just sent us all away and asked us not to come again."

"And then, a week later, Sephiroth came to visit. After that, a few things changed."

"01 calling 02. Come in, 02."

"I read you loud and clear, 01. Have you spotted the target yet?"

"Negative, 02. The enemy remains unseen for the time being."

"Roger that, 01. But I do have a question."

"What's that, 02?"

"What the hell is your Mother doing here?"

Roxas grimaced and rubbed his head embarrassedly, turning to glance at his Mother, who was sitting beside him and eagerly examining the weapon in Roxas's hands. "Don't ask me, Hayner. She just showed up, thought that it looked like fun, and decided to kip out with us for a while."

On the other side of the house, Hayner nodded in understanding and raised his walky-talky to his mouth. "Ah. That explains it. One more question."

Roxas furrowed his brow. "Alright. Shoot."

Hayner sighed. "What about Kairi?"

"I'm sitting right beside you, Hayner," Kairi said. "I can answer you myself."

Hayner sat up and hoisted his paintball gun onto his shoulder, resting his free hand akimbo on his camouflage pants. "Well then, tell me: why exactly are you here?"

"I wanted to see Roxas," she said. "I needed to talk to him. But as soon as I arrive I'm automatically swept away by…I don't even know what this is. Why on earth are you carrying around a paintball gun?"

Hayner grinned. "Well, you see, Kairi, I don't really know. Roxas hasn't actually told me yet."

The redhead raised an eyebrow impassively. "I see. So, your best friend calls you and tells you to bring your paintball gun over to his house, and you have no questions?"

Hayner snorted and ruffled Kairi's hair lightly. "None whatsoever."

The walky-talky buzzed lightly, before Roxas's excited voice carried through the plastic appliance.

"02! Our target is in sight. I repeat, our target is in sight. Aim at his surroundings!"

"Affirmative, 01. Aiming to splatter now!"

"Oh, this is so exciting!" Rinoa said.

Hayner peeked out of the window and took careful aim. "So," he muttered gleefully to himself. "This is Riku."

Kairi bolted upright, and she gasped in horror.

"Riku?!" she cried.

And then Hayner pulled the trigger.

From their perch on the large living room couch, Tifa, Yuffie, Leon, and Aerith sat up wildly.

"Do you hear someone screaming?" Yuffie asked nervously, glancing around the room. The question might as well have been rhetorical: inhuman shrieks echoed off the walls, sending shivers up the spines of everyone unfortunate to be within hearing distance.

"It sounded a bit like Riku," Aerith murmured.

Tifa was already on her feet, sprinting towards the door. She slammed into the door, her hands fumbling the handle before she managed to fling it open, and she all but tripped onto the porch. She took one long look at the tableau before her, and paused.

"Oh," she said softly. And then she snorted.

Leon, Yuffie, and Aerith appeared behind her, peering over her shoulders worriedly. Those had been the most disturbing, agonized screams they'd ever heard. It sounded like a person being roasted alive, and all four adults were exceedingly disturbed. They took a deep breath and cast their gaze around the yard, finally lighting on a single limp figure.

Riku lay sprawled across the front lawn. He looked uninjured. He was also painted a kaleidoscope of colors.

Yuffie burst into a fit of guffaws. Riku lifted his head slowly and shot her a weary glare. "Go…suck it," he choked, raising a trembling middle finger.

Aerith stifled a giggle and raised a hand to cover her mouth. "I…I suppose you have to hand it to Roxas and Sora-they're really serious about this whole prank war."

Leon sighed and let his head droop. What did it matter. This was just one more thing that illustrated what a complete and total crap-hole his life was turning into. He didn't even care anymore. There was no point.

"I wonder if we're allowed to take sides," Tifa murmured quietly. Her three companions shot her an assorted mix of glances, ranging from horrified to intrigued.

"Leon," she said slowly. "I think I just might know how to help you."


	11. Chapter 9: Just Wait!

**Chapter Nine: Just Wait!**

Zexion, to his own great dismay, often thought himself into knots. Pessimists do that sometimes, and if there was one thing that Zexion was, it was an incorrigible pessimist. A pessimist who was currently dating an optimist. An optimist who sometimes moonlighted as a pessimist moonlighting as an optimist. But therein lay the root of Zexion's troubles: pessimists tend to think themselves into circles, and Zexion was most definitely a pessimist.

He was also hopelessly lost, but we'll get back to that later.

Following his altercation with his lovesick little brother and said brother's best friend, Zexion had stepped outside and begun walking aimlessly, lost in thought. He'd taken a right, a left, a left, right, left, and just might have fallen down a hill somewhere along the lines. After all, Zexion was a pessimist lost in thoughts concerning an optimist, and couldn't be considered quite lucid.

Let's recap.

So a few hours ago, he'd been walking down the street with one Demyx Strife, the object of his slightly-unhealthy affections. And then-out of the blue and completely without approval from his own brain (who was still quite honestly a bit shell-shocked after the whole ordeal and taking a lunch break for its own sake)-he'd admitted that he could theoretically be amenable to makeoutage. And Demyx had proceeded to…well, Zexion wasn't entirely sure what Demyx had done. Actually, he wasn't sure how Demyx had gone from teasing Zexion about said slightly-unhealthy affections to chasing after him while demanding to be wooed. But it had happened, and though this made Zexion one very happy schemer, he couldn't help but think that he'd fucked up somewhere along the lines. Probably because he had the feeling that he'd walked into someone else's trap.

It wasn't that he'd never been infatuated before. He had. Back in high school, he'd been quite taken with the pretty school librarian. He might have in fact composed odes to her big brown eyes and sonnets to her literary ability, but that was neither here nor there, and Zexion had destroyed all evidence. But infatuations were distracting. Inevitable, sometimes, but distracting, and more trouble than they were worth. Even when he was the one in control (and let's face it, he was typically always the one in control) they were still mostly pointless. After all, why waste time pandering to the needs and wants of a partner who never fully appreciated you when there were so many other things to do? (The obvious answer was sex, but as Zexion had heretofore spent his entire life with his nose buried in textbooks, he didn't know that.)

The point was, relationships were an inconvenience. He didn't think he'd ever want one.

Until he'd seen Demyx smile, slow and sly and viciously kind, the expression doing something to his chest he was only half sure he liked, he'd wholly believed that.

Which, of course, brought him to his current situation: wandering the streets of Radiant Garden, hopelessly lost, less-hopelessly lovesick, and with the strongest craving for food.

So lost in thoughts was our favorite little pessimist that it took him a few seconds to realize that his pocket was buzzing. Furrowing his brow in irritation, he withdrew his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. "Hello?"

"Hi. Is this Zexion?"

That female voice sounded strangely familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. It was too sweet to be Larxene, too soft to be Yuffie, and too curious to be Tifa. So who else... "Yes?"

"Oh, good," Rinoa said. "For a second I thought I'd dialed the undertaker. Did you know there's only a single digit difference? That's what you call fate."

Zexion tried to figure out whether that had been a veiled insult, and if so, what the hell it was supposed to mean. "Ms. Rinoa," Zexion said. "Can I do anything for you?"

Rinoa laughed. "Well, since you were ever so gracious enough to offer, I suppose that there just might be a small favor I'd like to have done. You know. Since you're dating my son."

Five minutes later, when Zexion had finally succeeded in explaining that he had no intention of leading Demyx into a life of crime ( _really, I understand how hard you've worked to keep him on the straight and narrow, I'm not going to inflame his more sadistic urges and ruin him now_ ), and when she'd finally finished explaining, Zexion hung up. _Well_ , he thought. _I suppose this is as good a decision as any._

 _There's just one problem._

Zexion sighed and ran a distressed hand through his hair.

"Where am I?"

Aerith was very upset.

Now, in order to grasp the enormity of this statement, one should probably have a basic knowledge of Aerith's character. Let's start with her profession. She was a doctor-a healer, nurturer, a surrogate mother to every bouncing baby brat with a bad case of the flu. She was one of those idyllic (and by _idyllic_ , I mean _how is her existence possible, she's a human being)_ women whose children would always be well-behaved, whose husband would always act suitably well-bred, and who would always have a cherry pie cooling on the windowsill for the local ragamuffins to sample. She has raised her voice a grand total of once in her entire life, and that was during choir practice (Afterwards, her music instructor told her kindly that her voice just wouldn't carry, and had assigned her to piano duty). So when one says that Aerith was very upset, one should probably duck and cover, because the end is nigh.

"I think we should TP the Strife house," Tifa said conversationally, sipping idly at a cup of cocoa.

Aerith's leg twitched violently, knocking into the coffee table.

"Nah, that's too cliché," Yuffie murmured thoughtfully. "We need something big. Like, we could hire a plane and write degrading messages in the sky. _Cloud talks about fight club_. Something like that."

Aerith's hands tightened convulsively around her coffee mug.

"I approve," Riku said. "If you embarrass Cloud, you, by extension, embarrass Sora. Teach that bastard to pass around-"

"Shut up," Leon said. "Everything's your fault, remember? I don't care about what you think will improve your situation; I just care about what improve mine." He sighed and rubbed at his temples. "Do you really think a skywriter would help?"

The cup Aerith was holding shattered into a thousand pieces.

"You all," she muttered, voice a decibel louder than normal, "are the most ludicrous, idiotic, impossible people I've ever had the displeasure of meeting." She narrowed her eyes at the flabbergasted looks she was being shot. "Oh, don't look at me like that. I've been putting up with this gibberish for far too long. What you four are suggesting is absolute nonsense." She huffed irritably and twisted her skirt into knots. "How on earth is pranking the Strife family going to make Cloud fall in love with Leon? If that's even what we want, which I am still undecided about, given the fact that you all moved here days ago and everything is happening ten times too fast. It's complete foolishness! Even assuming your theory held the slightest bit of weight, we've all seen the complete and total mess Riku made out of his love life."

"Hey," Riku said. "That was totally Axel's fault."

"Please be quiet for a minute, Riku," Aerith said. "Right now, Cloud is probably furious. He's been alone for years, for reasons no one knows, and which I don't feel I'm qualified to guess, and whatever Leon's intentions may have been, using the l-word in the middle of a conversation mere days after Cloud met you was not very intelligent. Even someone entirely all right with the concept of romance would be surprised, and Cloud is not. He's scared and shocked and he probably feels terrible.

"So, taking all this into consideration, I want you to picture this: you're Cloud Strife, and you feel like crap. Your life is crumbling around your ears, your younger cousins are at war with your next door neighbors, and poor Vinnie has just been dyed pink. So there you are, contemplating your pitiful existence, when you decide to walk outside to pick up the morning newspaper. You exit the front door, trip over a chocobo, and land flat on your face. And then, as you struggle to your feet, something in the sky catches your eye. You look up, and guess what? It's a big fat blimp, announcing to the world that you, Cloud Strife, talk about fight club!"

When the last echoes of 'fight club,' faded from the living room, Aerith's four companions unfroze, looking oddly windblown.

"Wow," Tifa said. "I never knew that pitch was humanly possible."

"I can't believe that Zack's not deaf," Yuffie murmured, twiddling her index finger inside her ear.

Leon buried his face discreetly in the sofa cushions.

"I'm sorry, guys," Aerith said, with a long exhale. "Cloud won't magically fall in love with Leon. At this point, I think Cloud is going to have a difficult time even looking at him. I want to help. You know that I want to help. I just don't see how."

The room was silent for upwards of five minutes, each inhabitant lost in their own thoughts. Finally, Leon sighed, running a shaky hand through his hair. "I can't do anything about it if he doesn't want love," Leon mumbled. "But if the problem is that he doesn't think he's worthy of it-"

"You know people aren't that simple," Aerith said. "All the love and support in the world will only change Cloud's mind if Cloud wants it to change. You can't tear down years' worth of confidence issues-if that's even what this is, and like I said, I don't know-just by telling him he doesn't need to have any. It's not helpful. Actually, it's rather rude."

"And it'd be hard to do even that if he refuses to see you, Leon," Yuffie said. "Long-distance love affairs are overrated."

"And none of it has anything to do with Sora's abject humiliation," Riku added.

"Actually, on that note, I've been meaning to ask," Yuffie said, turning to Riku. "I thought this all started because you liked Sora."

Riku grumbled under his breath. "I did."

"And…?"

A furious squawk. "And then he gave my phone number to the general public!"

"So?"

"So? What do you mean, so? I'm going to take that bastard and-"

"This isn't the time, dear," Tifa said. "You can wallow in your teenage angst later. We were discussing Cloud."

"Which is all very well and good," Riku said, "and I would love to continue discussing, with my mother, how to aid my adopted father in committing marital infidelity, but like Yuffie said, it's gonna be difficult getting them in any sort of situation where they could theoretically commit adultery when Cloud refuses to see him."

"Well, that's simple," Tifa yawned. "You've just gotta knock Cloud off-kilter."

"Again," Yuffie groaned, rubbing the bridge of her nose in consternation. "How?"

The only female Leonhart smirked. "Haven't you been listening to a word I've been saying?" she asked. "Pranks!"

Aerith swore.

Zexion knocked on the front door of the Strife household. Sure, it had only been a few hours since he'd last seen Demyx, but he'd been assigned a mission, and Zexion was nothing if not devoted to the cause.

"Your mother called me," Zexion said, when Demyx opened the door.

Demyx blanched. "Oh no."

"You needn't stress," Zexion sighed. "She made me promise I wouldn't pressure you into doing anything you didn't want to do, demanded I keep it slow, and somehow extracted a promise to help weed her garden every other Sunday."

The blond slumped in relief. Zexion allowed this for a moment. Then he continued.

"She also told me I should take you out. Which is why I'm here."

Demyx frowned. "Wait, what? You mean, a date?"

"Of a sort," Zexion said, shrugging. "I think mostly she's just testing me to make sure I'm capable of keeping curfew, but yes, if you'd like to call it that: a date."

"...a date."

"She said that your house was a bit chaotic at the moment," Zexion said. "She might have mentioned something about your attempt to bury yourself in the couch cushions. Kitchen utensils may or may not have been involved. So she suggested that I take you out. Let you get some fresh air."

Demyx gaped, his mouth working soundlessly like a fish out of water's. Finally, he squinted. "Ignoring the fact that my Mother just delegated a date…"

"I'm not really sure that's something you should be ignoring," Zexion said.

"We literally just went out half an hour ago," Demyx said. "You're coming on a bit strong, Zex."

"I will pay you money to never call me that again," Zexion said. "And I'm hardly pressuring you. Your mother asked me."

"Like you didn't jump at the opportunity."

"Not really," Zexion said truthfully. "Actually, I was rather looking forward to taking a nap."

Demyx warred between confusion and offense and chose offense. "You're paying for dinner for that. Or you would be, if I thought that this was a good idea? My cousin's spent the last few hours flipping his proverbial shit. I don't think this is really the right time."

Zexion opened his mouth to answer-

-just as two teenagers walked down the hall, playing an impromptu game of tug-of-war with a paintball gun.

"I said that it was safe, Kairi! We weren't aiming to hit! And anyway, Roxas assured me that the asshole deserved it! After what he did to poor Sora, I can't believe you're defending him!"

"And I can't believe you shot at Riku with a paintball gun, you trigger-happy lunatic!"

Zexion raised an eyebrow in question, his gaze following the two struggling teens down the hall. "Who shot Riku with a paintball gun?"

Demyx laughed fretfully and stepped past the threshold, closing the front door decisively behind him. "Well, uh…you see…" He tapped his shoe against the pavement in a nervous gesture, and then decided on the safest course of action. "So, where were we going?"

Zexion narrowed his eyes and spent a long minute debating whether or not to pursue the subject. And then he sighed.

"You'll see. Come on-we're taking the car."

"The time is ripe for a preemptive strike! We must act now while our enemy is unbalanced; give them time to react and all will be lost! If we deploy our forces now, we'll certainly catch them unawares. Just you wait, Riku Leonhart-victory will be ours!"

There was a slight pause. And then Sora found his voice.

"But that's horrible!" he cried. "Roxas, we've already gone too far! I mean, okay: Riku's a jerk. Yeah, he defaced our yard and dyed your least favorite chocobo pink. But we painted their Dalmatians and paintballed Riku and basically made sure he'd never again be able to use that phone. I think we're more than even!"

"For the last time," Roxas said, "we didn't paintball him. We paintballed the ground that just happened to be holding him. There's a big difference."

"And as much as I'm grateful for that difference," Kairi said, "you still have ten seconds to explain to me what on earth is going on."

Roxas and Sora froze and spun around, clutching their respective paintball guns to themselves. On the opposite end of their frightened glares stood Kairi, standing with her one arm akimbo, the other wrapped around Hayner's collar bone, and one foot tapping dangerously on the ground.

"Please answer wisely," Hayner squeaked. "She's got a pretty tight grip on my neck."

Roxas frowned and opened his mouth to protest, but Sora clamped both hands over his mouth. Ignoring Roxas's violent attempts to escape, he grinned nervously. "Well…did you really want us to start from the beginning? Because, umm…that could take some time."

"Riku's a pervert who conspired with a chocobo to land himself on Sora's lap," Roxas said.

"Oh," Sora winced. "Or you could just tell her the condensed version. That would work, too."

Kairi stood there frozen, her grip on Hayner's throat automatically relaxing. The blond boy breathed a sigh of relief.

"Right," she said. "You expect me to believe that Riku coerced a chocobo into running him over, because he somehow knew that the chain of events would end with him in Sora's lap."

"I think we all understand what happened," Sora muttered. "We don't need to bring it up at every party."

"Roxas," Kairi said slowly, releasing Hayner, who scurried away to take refuge behind his friends. "Vinnie is a chocobo. A possibly anthropomorphic chocobo, but a chocobo nonetheless. I don't think it's actually possible to conspire with chocobos."

"Riku Leonhart is a criminal mastermind. Coercing chocobos would be child's play."

"Riku is not a criminal mastermind."

"Well, possibly not a _mastermind_ ," Roxas admitted. "But definitely a criminal. He has _lackeys._ "

"Lackeys," Kairi said.

"Yeah," Roxas said. "This redhead with stupid catchphrases. A lackey."

Kairi's glare dropped the global temperature by at least five degrees. Something in Sora's head began turning, and the threads of realization began tugging slightly at his brain. "Wait…" he muttered, tugging at a lock of hair in thought. "Why do I feel like I should be remembering something?"

"Oh," Kairi said, in the cheerful tones of a person who really wasn't feeling cheerful at all. "You mean my brother."

Sora thumped one fist into an opened palm, nodding to himself. "Ah. That's what I should have remembered."

"Your brother," Roxas said.

"My brother," Kairi said. "Who I actually came to talk to you about! "You see, Roxas, I went to the mall today with Selphie and Olette, and there I am, about to grab the very last copy of the new Loveless CD when a flyer is shoved into my hand. A flyer, Roxas. And guess what's on that flyer?"

"Discount coupons to Scrooge's ice cream shop?"Roxas muttered hopefully.

Kairi's polite smile froze. "No," she said. "They were not discount coupons to Scrooge's ice cream shop. No. My hand was six inches away from grabbing the last copy of the Loveless CD when it was snatched from my fingertips, because I was too horrified at the contents of said flyer to follow through with my hand's initial motion! Do you know why? Because for the space of one split second I thought I would actually be able to talk to Tidus Highwind, and then I read the number and it was yours and I am in despair and it is all your fault!"

Roxas blinked. "So...you're not upset that we used Axel's number. You're upset because-"

"Tidus Highwind," Kairi wailed.

Three minutes later, when Kairi had finally managed to calm down:

"We really didn't do it to upset you," Roxas said, somewhat awkwardly. "But he sort of had it coming? He really was horrible to Sora. We could probably keep this up for the next few weeks and we wouldn't be even."

"We're already even," Sora said, with a frustrated sigh. "I told you, the paintballing was enough."

"More than enough," Kairi said. "I completely don't believe this. Just because you're an overprotective jerk it doesn't mean that you should make it your life's goal to embarrass Riku and Axel as much as you can when all of this was probably a complete misunderstanding!"

"You can't misunderstand something like a cheek on a crotch!"

"Riku tripped!" Kairi said. "You tripped! Vinnie plopped himself behind you, and you all tripped! It's Riku's fault that none of you were looking where you were going and you all managed to trip over an innocent bird and land in a pile of human limbs!"

"Innocent my ass," Roxas muttered.

"And if he was innocent," Kairi continued, "then do you really expect him to just sit there and take it? You all painted his dogs! How is that any different from the stunt he and Axel pulled with your chocobos?!"

"It's different because we were getting even and he was continuing the war!"

"Not if he was innocent to begin with."

"Then why the hell would they prank us back?" Roxas asked. "It makes sense if Riku really is an asshole-he'd feel rejected, of course he'd try to exact revenge. But if they were innocent, they should have realized that attempting to explain the situation would do them loads better than exacting vengeance."

"Like you would have listened," Sora and Hayner muttered simultaneously.

"Because they're both infatuated," Kairi said. "Of course they made stupid mistakes! What else could you expect a pair of lovesick idiots to do?"

Roxas's face went slack. "Wait," he said. "Riku's obvious. But…are you saying that Axel likes Sora, too?"

Sora debated putting himself up for adoption.

Kairi sighed. "Not Sora, you idiot. Axel doesn't like Sora. He likes _you_."

The room froze.

"Me?" Roxas said slowly. "The lackey likes me."

"He's got a name, Roxas," Kairi said, brow. "Whether you like it or not, the two of you have managed to win yourself the most idiotic admirers in all of creation. Congrats."

"Me," Roxas said again, expression vaguely faraway. "Why the hell would he like me?"

Kairi sighed. "Look," she said. "I know neither of you are very happy with the Leonharts and friends right now. To be fair, I doubt they like you much at the moment, either. But do you think you could put a stop to these pranks for a bit? Get to know them a bit more? I'm not asking that you return their affections. But I like you all very much. I'd like it if you could try to be friends."

And with that, Kairi grabbed her purse, straightened her shirt, and left the three-shell shocked boys to clean their paintball guns.

"Hollow Bastion?"

Zexion risked a glance away from the road and lifted an eyebrow, flipping his turn signal. He shrugged, squinting against the glare of the late afternoon sun. "I used to live here, remember? I figured you should meet my friends."

Demyx froze and did an impromptu imitation of a popsicle on a hot summer's day. He succeeded about as well as could be expected."You're moving a little too fast, don't you think?"

Zexion shot him a narrow glance. "You tried to seduce me into confessing to you by performing fellatio on a creamsicle. I think if anyone has a right to talk about moving too quickly, it's me."

"Blowjobs are one thing," Demyx said. "Meeting the in-laws is something else entirely."

"They're people who annoy me on a mostly regular basis, not my family members," Zexion said. "And the only reason I'm taking you to see them is because your mother gave me relatively short notice and there was no where else I could think of to go."

"Movies," Demyx said. "People generally take their boyfriends to the movies."

"Boyfriends."

"Well, we ain't girlfriends," Demyx said.

Zexion pulled into the parking lot of an apartment complex, and closed his eyes against the strange pulling at his stomach. Then, without waiting for Demyx to unbuckle his seatbelt, he turned in his seat and grabbed Demyx's face between his hands.

"I'm going to kiss you now," he said. "You can close your eyes."

Demyx stared at him. Almost robotically, he did.

Zexion leaned forward, slid a hand around Demyx's skull, and kissed him.

For a minute, long enough that Zexion began to think perhaps he shouldn't have done this, Demyx didn't move. And then he wrapped his fingers around the collar of Zexion's shirt, opened his mouth, and slid his tongue inside.

Zexion had never been unpopular. He was handsome, he was intelligent, and most importantly, he was good at hiding the worst parts of himself. He could act the serious, responsible student, and never let anyone but those closest to him know exactly the type of person he was. He'd never had a shortage of admirers. But he'd never bothered reciprocating, which meant that the sum of his makeout experience had been a few bored experiments with friends, and only one of them had ever stuck their tongue down his throat. He'd bit it half off.

Demyx slipped his tongue through Zexion's lips, and biting was the furthest thought in his head.

By the time Demyx pulled back, the skittishness had disappeared, and the lazy, smug look (the same one that Zexion had seen the first day, the one that had set something warm curling through his stomach, the one that had convinced him this person could be more) had returned to his face. "Fine," Demyx said. "Get out of the car, then. I thought you wanted me to meet your friends."

Zexion took a breath in an effort to calm himself down enough that he wouldn't do something disgustingly embarrassing, like fumble the seatbelt. By the time he locked the door behind him, Demyx was already standing outside, staring appraisingly up at the apartment complex.

"This is where you used to live?"

"Up until last week, yes."

Demyx shoved his hands into his pockets. "Swank."

"It's an apartment," Zexion said. "And the walls were thin."

"Guess that made masturbating pretty hard," Demyx said, and politely ignored when it when Zexion missed a step. "So who am I meeting?"

Zexion shook his head, willing the warmth to drain out of his ears. "My best friend. For some definition of the word best friend."

"You could have just quit while you were ahead," Demyx said. "You didn't need to add the 'for some definition' bit. Is he going to threaten to rip me to bits if I break your maiden heart?"

Zexion shook his head, thoughtful. "Lexaeus isn't unreasonable. He's just overprotective."

Demyx shrugged and started walking, tossing his bangs away from his eyes. "I live with Roxas. I'm used to overprotective."

Zexion's smirk grew. "He's also six foot ten and built like a linebacker."

Demyx tripped on his feet.

The room was dim, the only light stemming from the pale orb Aerith often wore in her braid. A few feet to either side, the heavy breaths of her companions echoed, the only sounds in the otherwise silent room. She sighed, and brought a delicate hand to massage her temples.

"Guys?" she asked. "Why is it so dark? You have plenty of lamps."

On the opposite side of the couch, Riku shrugged irritably. "Yuffie wanted it like this. She said it makes everything more dramatic."

"And we're listening to Yuffie, why?"

"Because Yuffie is essential to our plan," Tifa said, her hands drawing obscure symbols in the air, oddly reminiscent of one Jack Sparrow. "She is, after all, the apple of our little Cloud's eye. He would never suspect her."

The pretty doctor closed her eyes in frustration. Of course. Because, in the end, everything came down to pranks. Their future happiness depended on childish, juvenile, imbecilic pranks.

"Alright, men," Tifa whispered. " _Operation: We're Ignoring Everything For The Sake Of Shitty Plot Devices_ begins now. Our target: Cloud Strife."

Aerith sighed. Yes, their future depended on pranks. And the idiots who pulled them.


	12. Chapter 10: Fuck You!

**Chapter Ten: Fuck You**

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Sometimes, one must step over the dead bodies of countless multitudes in order to climb the corporate ladder. Survival of the fittest. Eat or be eaten. Another one bites the dust.

These were all phrases echoing through Tifa Leonhart's head as she calmly surveyed the three other occupants of her tidy living room. Along with, of course, _True love conquers all,_ and _God helps those who help themselves_. An odd combination of quotes, to be sure, but hey: all's fair in love and war, and this had somehow turned into both.

"What you have to understand is this," Tifa drawled, selecting a plump grape out of a large bowl and popping it daintily into her mouth. "I'm doing all this for your own good. None of you seem to understand that I am right and you are wrong. The plan that Yuffie and I have created is flawless. Everyone emerges victorious." She sighed, and crushed the handful of grapes clutched in her hand into a messy pulp.

"But because the three of you chickened out at the last minute and tried to rush over to the Strife household to warn them all, I am forced to resort to this." She sighed wearily. "If you had just picked up that box of Christmas lights when I'd asked you to, Leon, I wouldn't have been able to tie you all up. You brought this upon yourself."

Leon, for the fifth time in the last six minutes, fell off the chair he was sitting on (read: tied to), and glared vitriol and poison at his soon to be ex-wife.

"Untie me this instant."

From her perch on the living room sofa, Tifa snorted. "No can do, dear," she told him sadly, ignoring the glare Leon shot her at the endearment. "If you would just stop trying to run over to Cloud's house to warn him about our awesome master plan from the stars and beyond-"

"Your awesome master plan from the stars and beyond," Leon muttered.

"-Which, by the way," Tifa continued, "Is guaranteed to make him fall head over heels in love with you, or your money back, then I wouldn't have had to hog tie you."

A few feet away, Riku sighed. He, too, had been tied to the upholstery, but unlike Leon, he'd chosen to demonstrate his angst in a much less physical way. That is to say, he'd decided to appeal to Tifa's more human side.

Or, in laymen's terms, whine at her until she gave in.

"All I wanted was to do this my own way," Riku mumbled. "Have some fun, kick Sora's sorry ass to Dynasty Souls and back, make him fall in love with me. This master plan of yours may help Leon, but what about me? Where am I left after this is all done?"

"I'll shave your head, Tifa," Leon hissed. "I'll run your boxing gloves through the paper shredder."

"Mmf," Aerith sighed.

"Right where I was when I began, that's where," Riku continued. "Living a life where Sora hates me, Roxas thinks I'm the spawn of Satan, and Zexion laughs every time he sees my face."

"Mmf," Aerith said.

Tifa closed her eyes and leaned backwards, pulling a CD player and a set of headphones from some interdimensional pocket of space probably located underneath the seat cushions. She settled the muffs over her ears and pressed play, letting the soothing rumble of ocean waves wash over her. "Would the three of you just be quiet already? Sheesh. You try and do a good deed."

"Mmf!" Aerith hissed around the pink hair ribbon stuffed in her throat. Were this any other person, the translation of said hiss would amount roughly to ' _Tifa, when I get out of this I'll tear your eyeballs from their sockets and roast them over a grill while I laugh at sightless face_.' As it was, Aerith merely meant something along the lines of ' _See if I water your flowers next time you're on vacation_ ,' but Tifa ignored the threat anyway.

"You too, Aerith," she moaned. "Honestly, you were supposed to be my ally. The sweet one. The friend I turn to for help. Instead you're acting almost as bad as the boys are."

"Mmf," Aerith said, her pretty eyes burning with all the strength of a raging fire. Riku and Leon snarled in agreement.

"The three of you should just learn to relax," Tifa continued. "I mean, really. What's the worst that could happen?"

There was a split-second pause, which Leon, Riku and Aerith each utilized to shoot each other terrified looks. And then uproar.

"Mother, you let me go this instant!"

"Tifa, if you don't release me I swear I will demand primary residence and all assets!"

" _Mmf!_ "

Yuffie was an awesome ninja. Oh, maybe not in this lifetime, mind you, but a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, Yuffie had conquered demons. She'd stolen Materia. She had been one kick-ass Wutaian shinobi.

She was also Cloud's darling. The apple of his eye. His lovely little pseudo-sister. His precious, if you'll pardon the Lord of the Rings reference. Had he a child, assuredly he'd have named it Yuffie.

These two pieces of information, while seemingly innocuous, are important for one reason, and one reason only. This reason may be summed in one word: faith.

Or, to be clearer:

Across the street, Yuffie tumbled into the arms of her spiky-haired blond best friend. She'd been sitting on his porch steps for the last hour, waiting for him to return home from work. It had been a difficult chore for one such as her (hell, she'd turned Sora down when he'd opened the front door in confusion and asked her if she'd just like to wait for Cloud inside), but for the sake of love, peace, and justice, she'd made every effort. And now, 3720 seconds later, her patience had been rewarded.

"Cloud!" she shouted happily, beaming up at the man in her arms, her pretty brown eyes wide and bright. "Cloud! Do you trust me?"

Cloud peered at his mischievous almost-sister curiously.

"Yes," he answered simply. "Why?"

"No."

Sora sighed irritably and ran a weary hand through his hair. "Roxas, this isn't a request. It's an order."

"No."

"Roxas, shut up and get up. Cloud and Yuffie are talking in the kitchen. We are leaving."

"No."

Sora raised an eyebrow, trying to calm his twitching eyelids. "Listen, Roxas," he growled. "I'm just about to launch into a long-winded soliloquy here, and if you don't move right this instant I swear I will give you a page long rationale as to why, exactly, the two of us are going to go next door, pick Riku up, walk to Axel's house, and then invite them all for a cup of coffee."

Roxas said nothing, but narrowed his eyes and stared at Sora with all the indignation of an unfed Vinnie. Sora glared back at him for a moment, then sighed and cast his eyes away.

"I don't know what planet you live on, Roxas," he said, "but where I'm from being nice is a good thing. Now, Kairi just about handed our asses to us on silver platters. And you know what? I'm thinking she maybe had a point."

"You're just saying that 'cause she's got you on a leash," Roxas muttered.

"No," Sora said. "I'm saying that because if she's right, and if all of this was just a misunderstanding, then everything we've done? All this fighting, this entire week? It's our fault! You've been dragging Demyx and me along on your quest for justice for the last two days, when in reality we were the unjust ones! We were the ones hurting someone who deserved none of it."

Roxas glowered at him. Something in his face tightened. "They deserved it."

"Roxas," Sora said, sighing. "If Kairi's right, Riku deserved none of this. We've all been idiots, but please. We have to talk."

Roxas kept his teeth clenched.

"And, of course," Sora said, his pensive expression morphing into an almost vindictive grin, "You can't have forgotten about Axel."

Roxas's face went slack. Sora plowed onward doggedly.

"He likes you. Kairi said so."

"That doesn't mean anything."

"If three years of friendship with Kairi has taught me anything," Sora said, "it's that Kairi is pretty much always right. Which means that not only have you been pretty condescending towards someone who could theoretically be innocent, you've also been pretty condescending towards someone who also thinks you're really cool"

"Shut," Roxas said, "up."

The odd grin on Sora's face shifted sideways and fell, leaving him looking pale and oddly bereft. He sighed, digging a hand through his hair. "Roxas," he said. "It doesn't have to be a bad thing."

Roxas turned around to face his older brother, his expression contorted in disbelief. "Are you actually trying to convince me to give him a chance?" he asked. "Even if you disregard the complete and total lack of affection I feel for him, how on earth are you going to get around the fact that I'm not gay."

"I dunno," Sora said. "But it'll probably involve reminding you that you're bi."

"Besides the point!"

"Entirely the point," Sora said. "But this isn't about that, and it's not about you having a crisis just because you realized that you dislike someone you also maybe thing is hot, don't look at me like that, I know your type. It's because it's Axel, and because it's Riku, and you've never liked forgiving someone when they haven't thrown themselves at you to admit they were wrong." He let his gaze fall, and sighed. "We all made stupid mistakes. But there's nothing wrong with forgiving someone, even if the stupid mistake they made they committed was against you."

"I thought you liked this," Roxas said quietly. "This war. I thought you were having fun."

"It's not fun if we hate each other," Sora said. "It's not fun when we won't stop."

"They've gone along with it, too," Roxas said. "They've pranked us back. They're as much participants in this as we are."

"But if Riku-"

"Stop it, Sora," Roxas said.

"You're not being fair."

"Don't say that."

"It's the truth," Sora said. "I'm not going to lie to you. You're not being fair. And I don't like it when you act like this."

He said it because it was the truth, and also because he knew it would be enough. Just like that, Roxas's shoulders tensed, and his mouth trembled, and he cast his eyes downward.

"I don't want to go," he said.

"I know," Sora responded.

"And you don't care if he wants you?"

"Not if he's willing to drop it so we can be friends."

"I don't like him," Roxas whispered. "I haven't been able to stand him from the day we met."

"I know," Sora said. "You don't have to. You never have to even look at his face. But I want to be friends with him. Please try to at least be able to sit in a room with him for me."

For a long moment, Roxas said nothing. He kept his eyes fixed motionless on the desk. And then he exhaled a long, slow, only slightly shaky breath. "I can try," he said. "I can...we can call this whole… Strife/Leonhart War to an end. No more pranks, no more paint. I could...try."

Sora's grin was enough to light up the sky. He raced out the house with a whoop, Roxas trailing slowly after him. He caught up to Sora at the Leonhart front door just as he rang the doorbell. There was the sound of scuffling inside, and what might have been a muffled screech-Sora and Roxas exchanged bemused looks-before Tifa appeared, her hair in disarray and a clump of grapes hanging from her shoe. She grinned upon seeing them.

"H'lo boys!" she said. "How are you?"

Roxas blinked at her. "Why is your house so dark?"

"And we thought we heard screaming," Sora said worriedly. "Is everything all right?"

"Fine," Tifa said, "just fine. Just dealing with the repercussions of proactivity. What can I do for you?"

The two brothers shot each other a glance. "Um," Sora said. "We were just wondering if Riku was around. Or Axel. We-"

Roxas snorted.

" _I_ wanted to invite him for a cup of coffee. To hang out for a bit."

Tifa brightened so quickly Sora and Roxas almost went blind from the glint of what appeared to be a thousand pearly white teeth. "You want to see Riku?"

"Yeah," Sora said. "I wanted to apologize. For things."

"I knew it," Tifa hissed. Then she smiled at them, just as widely as before. "Just you two wait a minute. I'll go inside and untie him."

She disappeared down the dim hallway. Sora and Roxas shot each other terrified looks.

"Did she just say 'untie him?'" Sora muttered.

"No," Roxas said firmly. "Absolutely not. We're not going there."

Something within the house crashed. A few seconds later, Riku sauntered out of the shadows. His hair was a mess, his clothes were disheveled, and his mouth looked like it didn't know whether to scowl or smile. Finally, it settled into an expression of supreme disenchantment.

"Hey," Riku said. "You wanted to see me?"

Sora hazarded a smile, Roxas glared, and Riku figured that was more than enough answer for him.

"You know," Demyx said, digging his heels into the floor. "It's really not too late to turn back now. We could go catch a movie. I heard that new Bixar one was good. You know, the one with Mickey and a kid with a keyblade and the muskrats. Now that I think of it, I think the next showing is, like, now, and everyone knows previews last for half an hour. So we could probably catch it if we turn around and leave this instant."

Zexion pulled Demyx up the steps. "I really have no idea why you're so upset."

"I'm not upset," Demyx said. "Why would I be upset? I just believe in staying away from people capable of killing me."

"Half the world would probably be capable of killing you."

"Half the world isn't, and I quote, six foot ten and built like a linebacker."

"And anyway," Zexion continued. "Lexaeus is a pacifist."

"So are elephants," Demyx said. "But try telling me you'd walk up to one to tell it you have every intention of banging its best friend."

Zexion missed a step. "Two days," he hissed.

"I'm flexible," Demyx said. "I'm also more than willing to offer up sexual favors in exchange for leaving right now."

A better man would have been tempted. Zexion was not a better man. Zexion was a sadist. He dragged Demyx up the remaining steps and knocked on the door.

There was the sound of heavy footsteps, and the click of an opening latch. Then the door swung open.

A man blinked down at them. He was huge, chest the size of a barrel-two barrels! three barrels! fifteen barrels!- and arms like fucking tree trunks. He stared at them for a moment, face entirely blank. And then, very slowly, he smiled. "You've been gone less than a week."

Zexion shrugged, but there was something pulling up his lips that didn't look at all like a frown. "I was homesick." He took a step backward and inclined his head towards the blond squirming slightly beside him. "Demyx," he said. "This is Lexaeus."

Demyx peeked up at him. Lexaeus frowned back down at him. Demyx felt very sure he was plotting Demyx's soon-approaching death.

"My intentions are honorable," Demyx said.

Lexaeus blinked at him, and raised a slow, thick eyebrow. "Thank you for explaining that," he said. "I was beginning to wonder."

"You live in Hollow Bastion," Demyx said. "How were you beginning to wonder?"

"Zexion and I enjoy a very active Skype-life," Lexaeus said. "He mentioned something about a popsicle."

Demyx wondered whether he could feasibly choke himself on his own tongue. Zexion, meanwhile, had made his way past Lexaeus, as comfortable in the apartment as in his own, and taken a seat on the sofa. Lexaeus followed him in, Demyx trailing a few feet behind. "You'll have to forgive him," Zexion said, squirming deep into the cushions of the couch. "He's had a difficult day."

Lexaeus snorted. "And I take it you've done everything you can to make it easier."

Zexion wondered whether it would be prudent to admit that if either one of them was winning in the let's-make-the-boyfriend's-life-difficult game, it was not him. "That's why I brought him here. I thought this would be good."

Lexaeus smiled at him, slow. "I know you well enough to know when you're lying. But you need to remember that new people will typically always assume that you're telling the truth."

Zexion's expression didn't change. Demyx, though, still standing awkwardly near the door (and shooting the window plaintive looks), glanced between them. "What does that mean?"

Zexion said nothing. Lexaeus took it upon himself, therefore, to answer. "If Zexion had brought you here just for me, I would say that he had been telling the truth. Regardless of what horror stories he's told you about me, I am not going to torment you. Any friend of Zexion's is a friend of mine. But he did not bring you here just for me. Zexion rarely does anything just for anyone. So when he called me to inform me that he would be visiting and bringing someone along with him, he knew very well that the next thing I would do would be to call the rest of our friends."

Demyx spent a few seconds trying to work through the convolutedness of that statement. And then he opened his mouth.

Someone knocked on the door. Zexion leaned back on the sofa, smile calm and wide. "Xaldin?"

"Unlikely," Lexaeus said. "He lives the closest, but when I called he said he wouldn't be able to join us until later. The others will probably be here first."

Here, Zexion's expression finally faltered. "I assumed it would just be him."

"I know you did," Lexaeus said, with the soft, gentle smugness of someone who has spent a lifetime being dragged around by his manipulative snake of a best friend and is taking quiet pleasure in finally being able to one-up him. "But I thought I would invite Marluxia and Larxene as well."

Zexion's jaw twitched.

"You'll be fine," he said, aiming the words at Demyx. "Xaldin is intense, but not intractable. And you'll be able to deal with Marluxia and Larxene well enough so long as you remember that they're both ridiculous and therefore their opinions don't matter."

"And Saix, of course," Lexaeus concluded, his quiet smile morphing into a not-so-quiet grin. "Let's not forget Saix."

Zexion froze.

"Saix," he said, voice calm in the way it always was when he was internally throwing some sort of fit. "You invited Saix."

Lexaeus smiled.

"Uh," Demyx said. "Should I be worried?"

Cloud sighed, leaning against the bathroom door. "Come on, Yuffie," he called impatiently. "Dinner's ready. You've been in there for the past half hour. Do I even want to know what you're up to?"

Inside the restroom, Yuffie giggled and adjusted the nozzle of the shower hose. "That was a masturbation joke," she said. "Don't worry about me. I just had some bad eggs for breakfast this morning. Give me a few more minutes; I'll be out in a second."

Cloud gave a grunt in affirmation. A few seconds later, the sound of his footsteps receded, and Yuffie was once more left in peace.

She grinned and tightened the shower nozzle, took a step backward, and proudly examined her handiwork. "I am so awesome," she whispered quietly to herself. And with that, Yuffie carefully tore the packet of powdered Kool-Aid she'd been clutching into little bits and flushed the pieces down the toilet. "Alright, Cloudster," she yelled, shoving the door open and walking down the hallway towards the kitchen. "I'm done!"

Cloud allowed himself a quirk of the lips and began setting plates at the dining room table. "Grab the lasagna, please."

The moment Cloud said _lasagna_ , a thousand light bulbs began flashing in Yuffie's brain. The world was a worse place for it. "No problem, Cloud," she yelled, hiding a smirk. "Gimme a minute."

Cloud smiled to himself, proud of the way his almost-sister had matured over the years, and blissfully ignorant of what the next 14.2 minutes would bring. Inner Yuffie, meanwhile, was doing the cha-cha. She pranced to the counter, grabbing the large bowl of lasagna and picking it up, twirling across the kitchen and towards Cloud, who took one look at her and narrowed his eyes.

"Stop dancing like that," he said. You'll trip and drop the food."

The teenage girl grinned over her shoulder at him, doing an easy pirouette. "Don't worry, Cloudy," she called. "I was a ninja in a past life. There's no way I'd ever-ack!"

The ' _ack'_ was the sound a ninja made when she tripped over her own shoelaces and fell flat on her face, the bowl of lasagna making a perfect arc in the air and landing on Cloud's head. It would have been a striking coincidence, had it actually, you know. Been a coincidence.

From her spot on the kitchen tiles, Yuffie giggled nervously. "Oops?"

"Yuffie," Cloud whispered, voice deathly quiet. "I'm going to kill you."

"Oh no, you won't!" Yuffie said, jumping to her feet and tugging Cloud down the hall. "Just you wait, we'll get you cleaned up in no time. You go and take a shower, and I'll start a new batch of lasagna. See? Easily fixed, no need for physical harm."

A glob of lasagna slid off Cloud's hair. "I think there's plenty need for physical harm."

Yuffie ignored him. "Come, come," she cried, pushing her older friend into the restroom. "Yuffie will fix everything. Just take a shower!" She laughed in apology and closed the door behind him, and did not breathe easily until she heard the sound of clothes hitting the floor over Cloud's muted grumbles.

And then she grinned.

Cloud often showered with his eyes closed. The smooth, steady beat of warm water pounding against the walls and massaging the kinks out of his body was unbelievably soothing, and he enjoyed the simple pleasure immensely.

This is why it took him all of ten minutes to realize that his entire body had been dyed red.

It took him another few seconds to process his change in complexion. And when he finally did, there was really only one reaction he could possibly give.

"What the fuck!" he shouted. He stared in shocked horror up at the shower head spewing what looked like blood down upon him, then jerked away from the spray of water and yanked the curtain open. He tripped over the side of the tub and fell, landing face-first in the pile of his lasagna-encrusted laundry. He yelled hoarsely in surprise, and grabbed a towel-pink? since when were his towels pink?-wrapping it around his waist even as he flung the door open.

"Yuffie!" he howled. "Where are you?"

He ran to the kitchen and promptly tripped on the tray that had once contained his dinner. The moment he landed on the floor, he started sneezing his lungs out, because somehow, in the time it had taken him to realize that his bathroom had turned into a scene out of a horror movie, his entire kitchen floor had been flooded with flour.

Cloud shrieked in confusion and no small amount of rage and stumbled to his feet. He turned blindly around and started lurching up the stairs to his room, desperate for some sort of sanctuary.

Sadly, it was not to be.

He slid to a halt outside of his bedroom and gaped. The doorway had been covered with the yellow tape so often seen at crime scenes. He spun around. Demyx's had received the same treatment. So had Rinoa's. And Sora's and Roxas's.

The cupboards were taped. The closets were taped. The den was taped. The sink was taped. It was a prank gone wrong, and in that moment, all Cloud could think of was how the hell this could have happened in a mere ten minutes. Only one person possessed the pure kinetic energy necessary to get so much done in such a short amount of time, and she was on his side.

This, of course, left him with only one possible conclusion.

The Leonharts had struck again.

And so Cloud, betrayed by his own house, dyed rose, covered in flower and lasagna and wrapped in a itty-bitty towel, began stumbling down the steps and to the front door. Cloud grabbed the doorknob and flung the entrance open, immediately bathing himself in the harsh light of the sun.

When his vision finally adjusted to the sudden glare, he opened his mouth and looked around. The first thing he saw was Yuffie, laughing her pretty little ass of while he dripped unknown liquids onto the front porch.

The second thing he saw was the steady red light of a camcorder as his darling pseudo-sister recorded this moment in history, thus ensuring his eternal humiliation.

The third thing he saw was the door to the Leonhart home swinging open, and a tall man stumbling outside, tripping over himself as if he'd been pushed. He looked around wildly for a minute, blinking a bit as his eyes tried to adjust to the light.

And finally he saw, two houses over, a brawny man stumble outside, clad in an omnipresent red bathrobe and sporting hair that was once again finally beginning to turn gray. The man walked down the driveway, bent over to retrieve his newspaper, and paused. Slowly, he turned to look at the three frozen individuals staring at him from a hundred feet away.

"Cloud?" Auron asked curiously, voice raised just loud enough to be heard. "Why on earth have you dyed yourself red?"

Cloud glanced between them. He debated whether or not he would regret it if he killed himself a ninja.

And then he turned in the direction of Leon (and his house), pushed past him, and stalked inside.

"And that," Tifa told Leon a few moments later, as she walked past him and out of the house, car keys jingling in her hand, "is why I'm smarter than you."

Leon had to bite his tongue to keep from saying _yes._

Elsewhere.

Four boys slumped down in their seats in the corner booth of Irvine's Café, each staring blankly at their coffee mugs and crepes. The air surrounding their immediate persons seemed to be at least 10 degrees colder than it was anywhere else on the planet, and the other patrons of the small shop were pointedly not staring at them.

Axel sighed and hazarded a glance up from his steaming cup of coffee to the blond boy obviously wishing death upon his own cup. As if sensing the gaze, Roxas looked up. His eyes narrowed until they all but disappeared in his face.

Axel winced uncomfortably and twisted in his seat. He motioned to the crepe sitting forlornly on Roxas's plate. "It's not gonna eat you, you know."

"Well, that's fair," Roxas said. "Because I don't feel like eating _it_."

Axel twitched. "Remind me again how I managed to get suckered into this?" he whispered at Riku.

Riku glowered at him. "I don't know. I think it had something to do with the fact that the one with serious behavioral issues came storming into your house, grabbed you by the hair, and threatened bodily harm if you didn't tag along on our trip to the coffee shop."

At his words, Roxas's eyes shot to Riku, furious. Beside him, Sora sighed.

"Look, guys," he began, almost helplessly. "I asked us all to come today because we-" At Roxas's sullen scowl, he quickly amended his statement. "I wanted to…apologize."

Riku and Axel glanced at each other, but said nothing. Sora bit his lip as if weighing his words. He nodded to himself slowly and continued.

"I know we all…sorta…maybe got off on the wrong foot. Quiet, Roxas. And it was our fault. _Shut up_ , Roxas. So…I guess..." He sighed and smiled helplessly up at the two boys sitting before him. "I wanted to know if we could start over? Be friends?"

And just like that, as if he was finally allowing himself to accept the reality of it, Riku's eyes lit. He stamped down on the grin threatening to split his face in half, muting it soft. "Yeah," he said. "I'd like that."

Sora smiled back.

Axel, though-he looked up, and turned to stare at the young blond boy glowering at his plate. "I'm guessing you're not including yourself in the 'friendship,' he said.

Roxas steadfastly refused to look up. His hands stay folded loosely on the table. "Sora wants me to."

"And what good is that gonna do," Axel said.

"Axel," Riku hissed.

Axel laughed dryly, glancing around. "What, it's the truth, isn't it? It's not like Roxas wants this. What, we're expected to accept their little peace treaty when it's not sincere?"

"Axel," Sora said.

"No," Axel said. "Blondie here has never liked either of us. He hates Riku and he hates me because I'm friends with Riku. Sorry, kid," he said, never once letting his eyes drift from Roxas, who'd finally lifted his gaze from his pastry, eyes slits in his pretty face. "But your hypothetical friendship extends only to yourself and Riku. Roxas here never had any intention of making nice with us."

As if the words had broken the dam keeping his anger in check, Roxas snapped. He shot to his feet and planted his palms on the table, leaning over until only a few scant inches separated his face from Axel's.

"Don't you try to pretend you ever wanted a friendship, either," Roxas hissed. "It was obvious from the beginning what your job in Riku's little ploy was. All Riku ever wanted was Sora Sora Sora, and he needed me out of the way if he was gonna get to him. You can't expect me to believe that you were a coincidence. You were never nothing more than a tool, a distraction so he could move in on my brother."

"Roxas, stop."

"And you expect me to feel sorry for how I've acted? Who the fuck do you think you are? You are not important, you don't want my friendship. You're just an extra in the cast. Don't act like you want to be friends, don't act like you're offended. I never wanted anything but to protect my brother."

" _Stop,_ " Sora said.

Roxas paid him no attention, his sight focused only on the quiet figure sitting before him, eyes boring back into his own, face oddly blank for someone who seemed to possess so much life.

"And now you sit here at this little coffee shop and you're just looking at me, trying to make me feel bad because I don't want a peace treaty, I don't want a friendship, because I don't see how either of you are anyone I'd ever want to be friends with." Roxas laughed, the expression low and steady and very, very pained. "Fuck you. I don't have anything in life except them, and when the time comes I'll give them away to people that love them, and do it with a smile on my face. But until that day comes I'll protect them, I'll protect him and if it means throwing your friendship back in your face, I'll do it and willingly. Because you are not as important to me as he is."

His chest heaved and his lips stretched in an expression of pain, or anger, or maybe something else. He shook his head as if to himself. "I won't," he whispered.

And without bothering to clarify that final statement, Roxas ran out of Irvine's Café.

Luxord considered himself a simple man. That is to say, he had others managing his money for him, and his typical day consisted of eating, sleeping, gambling, and sexing the locals up. When one is the owner of the largest casino this side of Midgar, one can generally do whatever the hell one wants.

However, by virtue of his simplicity, he normally didn't receive many house calls. He had few friends-including, but not limited to, the weird scientist who lived down the street, the weirder lady who lived across the road and bred killer plants and mutant muskrats, and a certain blond sitarist he'd met a year ago, and whom he continued to remain in contact with by way of weekly e-mails and the occasional phone call.

In other words, there were very few people he knew well enough to encourage house visits, and after the first few deaths and disappearances, the paparazzi had learned not to disturb him. So really, he had no idea who could be at the door.

He made his way to the door warily and nudged it open. And then his face broke into a smile.

"Auron, my good man!" he smiled, giving the red-robed man a brief handshake. "It's been a while."

Auron smirked and patted his friend on the shoulder. "A long while, and I'm sorry for that. But I'm afraid to say that I come with ulterior motives."

"I would be offended, if a visit from you weren't enough to automatically pique my curiosity," Luxord said. "What do you have for me?"

Auron shrugged. "A business venture."

Luxord immediately raised an eyebrow. "Regarding?"

"Gambling pools, of course," Auron said. "And I think you'll enjoy the premise behind this one."

A curious smirk. "Go on?"

Auron smiled back. "There are these two families I'm acquainted with. Interesting enough in their own rights. Any one of them could probably lead a pool on their own. But these two families seem to have declared a very unusual sort of war upon each other. A...very unusual sort of war, indeed."

And a slow, slow smile spread across Luxord's face.

"Oh? How so?"


	13. Chapter 11: Well, Maybe

**Chapter Eleven: Well, Maybe**

The world does not exist in a vacuum. Things would probably be a lot easier if it were, sure; life would be perfect, Walgreens would be unnecessary, and the things that caused us pain a hundred years ago probably wouldn't be around now. But it doesn't. You drop a piece of paper and a brick and the brick is still gonna hit the floor first, because the law of conservation of energy only works in airless rooms and the world is not an airless room. Life is not perfect, it is not predictable, and it would do one a large amount of good to remember that.

It is cruel, though. Leon could tell you that.

After all, when one is a 28-year old male who has not had a decent lay in years (all right, _weeks_ , but Tifa was his best friend and wife and sometimes people just had needs), one has all the authority in the world to claim that life is cruel. Especially when one's romantic interest-who wishes death upon one on a regular basis-is standing naked under one's shower, droplets of water dripping down every bit of his hot, wet, soaking body, his muscles rippling and coiling under the spray.

This is not where Leon was going with the train of thought. What he meant to say goes something like this: Cloud Strife was showering in his bathroom, and Cloud hated him, and the thought of that was so upsetting Leon almost didn't even want to join.

Leon sighed and walked over to the bathroom door. He could hear the shower running, the soft thrum of water slapping onto the tiles relaxing in its rhythmic quality. Occasional grunts and irritated sighs filtered through the door, the sort of sounds you made when you were covered in spaghetti and dye and neither wanted to come off. Cloud would probably be scrubbing. He'd definitely be mad if he saw Leon like this. Truth be told, he'd probably have the right.

Once upon a time, Leon had seen someone on a motorcycle drive by.

Leon dropped onto the couch, and buried his head in his hands, and tried to work out what to do.

There were things he needed to think about, problems he had to work through, difficulties and complications and so much shit piled on shit that he'd barely had a minute in the last week to sit down and breathe. Riku, and whatever was going on with him. Zexion, and how the last time Leon had seen him it had looked as if Zexion had been so blindsided he could hardly see. Tifa. His wife. Tifa. And he wasn't focusing on any of them, because every time he closed his eyes he was back in school, and a boy with wild eyes drove right by. Of course Cloud hated him. Leon was a piece of shit.

Distantly, he heard the shower turn off. Leon shook his head and jammed his palms deeper into his eyes. "What the hell," he muttered, "Am I going to do?"

Now, Leon had just spent the last twenty minutes alternating between hating himself and kind of wanting to jerk off, and honestly did not want any more reason to stress. So when someone actually answered his question with a grunt and a shuffle, he shot to his feet and clutched at his chest. Slowly, he swiveled his head to the darkened, shadowy corner of the room, a la _The Exorcist_. And then he blinked.

Aerith blinked back.

Aerith was sitting against the corner, her mouth gagged and her limbs still plastered to her sides in an impromptu butterfly knot. She glowered at him and thumped her head back against the wall. Leon ignored the sound and squatted before her. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. "Tifa went too far. She had no right to tie you up."

Aerith released an irritated "Mmf." Leon figured it translated roughly to " _She will get hers soon_."

He smiled and scooted beside her, leaning his head against the side of the wall. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I know this is all a huge hassle. I just can't figure out what the hell I'm supposed to do."

A sympathetic: "Mmf."

"I really fucked up, didn't I?" he continued. "When I kissed him. I should have explained beforehand, or I should've given him some time. But he was just there, and..." He paused, then closed his eyes. "I don't know what the hell's wrong with me. This isn't normal, is it?"

Aerith rolled her eyes. Leon, because he was wallowing in self-pity and composing a long-winded soliloquy, did not notice.

"I can't figure this out," he said. "I've never been able to figure him out. He makes my head hurt. It's hard to breathe."

The slim brunette sitting beside him tipped her body to the side until her cheek rested on his shoulder. She nuzzled his collar bone once, and smiled when Leon lifted a hand to pat her awkwardly upon the head. He sighed, closing his eyes.

"Aerith?" he asked. "What do I do?"

There was silence for a moment. That moment bled into minutes. A long while later, Leon's brow furrowed irritably.

"That wasn't a rhetorical question," he growled. "I just humbled myself before a woman. I threw my pride and dignity out the window and at your feet. I'm waving the white fucking flag, here. The least you could do is give me advice, dammit."

His only answer was a stony silence. When he realized no answer was forthcoming, his eyes shot open angrily and he turned to glare at her. Aerith met the glare with one of her own and doubled it.

"Mmf," she growled. Leon winced.

"Ah," he said awkwardly. "I should probably get rid of that gag, huh?"

Aerith head-butted him.

Demyx crossed his legs. Uncrossed them. Twiddled his thumbs and twined the fingers together. Ran a hand through his hair and tugged on the locks compulsively. A single droplet of sweat slid down his temple. Zexion followed its suicide plunge off the Demyx's chin and resisted the urge to follow it with his mouth.

All around him the room, various people lied sprawled across couches and sofas and kitchen tables, each staring at him in what seemed less amusement and more wicked, wicked delight. Lexaeus watched Demyx twitch, and sighed. Marluxia watched Demyx fidget, and smiled. Larxene watched Demyx tremble, and possibly began idly fantasizing about tying him up. Saïx _had_ been watching Zexion sneak carefully blank glances at Demyx, but had decided that there were only so many ways one could stare at a person without becoming awfully bored, and had abandoned that task in favor of twirling a butter knife between his fingers, staring at Demyx impassively.

Needless to say, Saïx intimidated Demyx the most.

"So," Lexaeus said finally, turning towards Marluxia. "Shall we begin?"

Zexion suddenly sat up straight.

"Begin?" Demyx asked.

"Why not?" Marluxia responded, grinning politely. "We may as well get it over with."

"I forbid it," Zexion said. "I flatly forbid it."

"No, really," Demyx said. "What are you going to begin?"

Which was about the moment that Larxene hit the lights.

For a moment (of which Demyx spent the duration trying to make a break for the door) all he could hear was an abrupt thump, followed by a muffled curse, and what sounded like Zexion muttering hissed invectives against every one of his creepy best friends. And then two pairs of hands (one large, one small, both of them apparently _belonging to bodybuilders holy shit_ ) caught him by the shoulders and hauled him to a desk.

Demyx slapped his hands together in prayer.

And then a flashlight went off like a supernova, effectively blinding him to the hell he was about to face.

He squinted, holding up a hand to shield his eyes. Behind the flashlight, he could vaguely make out the forms of Marluxia and Larxene, grinning at him like twin Cheshire cats, if the Cheshire cat had been ridiculously hot and also probably born of deepest evil. Marluxia's grin morphed into a smirk.

"Will you state your name and age for the record, please?"

Demyx blinked. "What."

"It was really a simple question," Marluxia said. "I assume this is information you already know."

"Oh my gosh," Demyx said. "Is this an interrogation thing?"

"He's not very quick on the uptake," Larxene said.

"It is," Demyx said. "What is wrong with you? This is an interrogation thing."

"I'm beginning to question your taste," Marluxia told Zexion.

"I'm beginning to question your ability to distinguish fantasy from reality," Demyx said. "You are doing _an interrogation thing._ "

Marluxia and Larxene looked at each other. Larxene withdrew from her pocket something that looked like a set of knives.

"Demyx Strife," Demyx said, swearing to himself that if he ever survived he'd kiss Zexion until their lips fell off. "Nineteen."

"Thank you," Marluxia said. "Where do you go to school?"

"HBU," Demyx said. "Like 98% of the other college students who live near HBU."

"And how," Larxene said, "did the two of you meet?"

There was a slight pause as Demyx tried to figure out whether to answer that truthfully. "He moved in next door."

"And you immediately decided to screw him senseless?"

Demyx blinked, and in a moment of coherent thought resisted the urge to say, _well, yeah_. "No," Demyx said. "He bought me Ars tickets, first."

Larxene's maniacal grin faltered. "Ars tickets."

"I am easily swayed," Demyx said. "It's a character flaw."

Marluxia and Larxene glanced at each other. Somewhere in the darkness behind him, he could feel Zexion muttering something against Lexaeus's hand. Demyx couldn't be sure, on account of it being muffled, but it sounded an awful lot like ' _why._ '

"So what you're saying is you agreed to go out with him for concert tickets," Larxene asked.

"No," Demyx said. "I'm saying I would have given him a handjob for concert tickets. I agreed to go out with him because he's mean and I'm masochistic enough to like it."

Marluxia and Larxene were squinting at him now. "Is that legal?"

Demyx blinked. "Why would that not be legal?"

"You just said you'd trade concert tickets for sexual favors," Marluxia said. "I really don't think that's legal."

"I said I was all right with the _idea_ of trading concert tickets for sexual favors," Demyx corrected. "I'm pretty sure that's still legal."

"Nothing happened," Zexion said in a low, anguished moan.

"Good," Larxene said. "Because otherwise it wouldn't have been legal."

Demyx carefully didn't mention the fact that the pair of them had hauled him against his will to a chair and then brandished knives in his general direction to make him respond to questions. "Debates about dubious legality aside, are we done?"

"Sure," Larxene said. "You want Zexion to torture you sexually, I don't have a problem with it."

"That's really not what I said," Demyx said.

She gave no indication that she'd heard. "Congratulations," she continued, turning to Zexion. "I give him two months before he's fallen for you, and three days before he gives it up. Good luck."

Demyx opened his mouth (why, he wasn't sure, because after the last few minutes he was drained of any and all combative spirit), but Marluxia didn't give him a chance to formulate a response. The man clapped once and turned to smirk at his companions.

"Now!" he said, waving an airy hand in the air. "Who's up for round two?"

There was silence. Demyx's composure fled.

"W-wait," he stammered. "There's a round two?!"

Cloud stepped out of the shower and grabbed a light blue towel from the rack, running it through his hair. He wrapped it around his waist, sat down on the toilet, and sighed.

It would probably take him the rest of the day to clean up the mess Yuffie made. More, if he wasn't able to enlist help from the boys. He could theoretically get her to do it for him, given that she was the one who'd made the mess in the first place, but Yuffie knew how to clean the way puppies knew how to clean, in that she didn't, and would probably just end up doing something worse. Whatever the case was, though, the rest of his day was shot, and now he was standing in the middle of a house that belonged to Leon Leonhart.

He wrapped the towel tighter around his waist, holding it to himself more because the feel of it gave him comfort than because he cared much about covering up. He thought about wiping a hand through the fogged mirror, thought harder about writing a message there, something kind perhaps, or cruel. He didn't think about kisses, or Tifa, because how could he think of Tifa when her husband had kissed him, and how could he think of kisses when her husband had said _love._ He kept his brain safely in the realm of financial worries and cousins. He did not let himself think of anything else at all.

He thumped his head back against the wall and pressed his palm to his lips.

"Dammit," he whispered. "I can't do this. You can't expect me to do this."

There were three people that could have been directed to. He didn't want to think about which one.

His clothes were in a filthy pile on the bathroom floor, and the only way Cloud would ever be able to wear them again was if they went through multiple washes first. He picked them up, walking out of the shower. Leon wasn't in the hallway, and he wasn't in the first bedroom. He was in the parlor, however. More importantly, so was Aerith, who was bound to a chair by what looked like Christmas lights.

Leon looked up when Cloud entered, took one glance at the towel, and choked.

Cloud blinked, long and slow. "If the two of you are experimenting with bondage and S&M," Cloud said, "I am going to faint on your floor."

"What," Leon said.

"Mmf!" Aerith said.

Cloud calmly walked forward and dropped to his knees before her. Gently, he removed the gag covering his friend's mouth. "That was a joke," he said mildly. "Aerith would never cheat on Zack. She believes in morality. You don't find it very often anymore."

Leon looked unhappy. Cloud tried very hard not to care at all.

"I need a set of clothes," he said after a long pause. "I'll be waiting in the room over there."

With that, he walked out of the living area and into the nearest bedroom, closing the door behind himself. The soft click of a lock was horribly audible in the awkward silence that followed in his wake.

Aerith sighed. "You need more help than I thought."

Leon slumped forward and groaned in agreement.

 _Intermission_

The reader now enters a brightly lit house. Toys and stuffed animals are littered across the floor. A battered safety gate is locked against the kitchen entrance. It has seen better days-it leans crookedly on its hinges, and looks like the only thing holding it together is duct tape. Giggles and squeals echo through the house, along with muffled curses and groans. Over the noise, a ringing phone is heard.

An average looking middle-aged man stalks towards the phone, a squirming toddler in his arms. He curses angrily at the appliance and picks it up, shoving it against his ear.

"This is Cid Highwind, what th'hell do you want?"

"I have a job for you, Highwind."

Cid muffles a vulgarity. The reader is left to wonder whether it is because of the job proposition, or because Cid's bouncing baby brat has just sunk her teeth into his ear.

"I'm a bit busy right now," he growls. "When you finally settle down and have a kid, then you can tell me to do odd jobs for you. Until that day-"

"A year's supply of diapers, Highwind."

Cid's grimace morphs into a broad grin. "You've got yourself a deal, Auron. Tell me what to do."

Thirty miles away, Auron turns towards Luxord and gives him a thumbs up.

 _End Intermission_

"So, Cloud," Aerith began uncomfortably. "Would you like anything to eat?"

"No, thank you," Cloud answered, glaring impassively at the kitchen table. Aerith fought back a frown and turned her forcedly cheerful face towards Leon. She smiled.

"How's Zell, Leon?" she asked. "I haven't seen him since the boxing championship two years ago."

"He's fine," Leon said curtly, never once removing his eyes from their determined task of staring out the kitchen window. Aerith resisted the urge to pound her head on the table.

"It…it's nice weather today, isn't it?" she asked stiffly.

There was a simultaneous " _Whatever_ ," from both men.

"Guess what, guys?" she chirped in forced cheer, her eyes closing with the effort it took to maintain a grin that large. "Zack and I are getting married!"

Neither man answered. They were two busy alternating between glaring at each other and trying to sink into the floor.

Aerith's right eye twitched. With a muted screech shot through clenched teeth, she leapt to her feet, so quickly her chair toppled to the floor behind her. Both men jumped and shot her surprised looks.

"I just informed the both of you that I was getting married," Aerith said. "To Zack. And the two of you said nothing because you were too busy stewing in your insignificant little worlds to bother caring that I am getting married. _Do you understand_."

Leon and Cloud said nothing. They were still trying to accept the fact that Aerith Gainsborough had raised her voice.

"The two of you have brought me to the end of my rope," she said. "It's no wonder Tifa and Yuffie were so willing to take drastic measures. I have never in my life met two men as insufferable and impossible as you are. If I weren't still so ambivalent about this entire situation, I would almost say you were made for each other!" Cloud opened his mouth to angrily respond. She cut him off before he could even try. "You know I love you," Aerith said. "More than I've ever loved anybody except Zack. But in case you haven't realized, Cloud, you've sort of got your head buried in your posterior, and there's nothing I can do about that unless you want to do something about it yourself. You are the only person who has a right to make decisions for you, and I will love you whether you adore yourself or don't. But you've been retreating into yourself for years, and you are growing worn."

Cloud said nothing, but she hadn't expected him to. She turned to Leon. She tried to figure out what to do.

"I don't know what to feel about this situation," Aerith said. "I don't know what to do with either of you. I know that you're upset, and I know that makes me unhappy, but I also know that you both have the right to whatever you feel, and to try to do what you want to do. I don't have any advice I can give either of you. I don't know whether any of you-you, Tifa, the boys-are making the right decision. But, again, that's because none of you are very open about the things that matter most, and I just don't know enough about the situation to be able to adequately judge."

Both men stayed quiet. Aerith twisted her fingers together.

"All I do know," she continued, "is that I want you to be friends. I don't know if that's possible. I have only the barest idea what you all have been up to these past few days. I have no idea what happened to either of you in the past. And I don't know what the future holds for any one of us, or what the right decision is. Let tomorrow bring whatever it will. But I care for the both of you dearly, and while I will never push either of you to do anything you don't want to, I do think the pair of you could get along well, if only you resolved to start over, and try to be friends."

Neither men said anything for the longest while, staring at nothing while Aerith stood before them, motionless and implacable as stone. Cloud spoke first.

"I'm sorry I wasn't listening to you when you told us that Zack proposed, Aerith," he said. "Congratulations."

Aerith face went blank in confusion for a minute. Then she snorted. "Cloud, you dummy. I was lying."

Leon and Cloud both stared at her, dumbstruck. "You mean…" Leon said slowly. "He hasn't…"

"Of course not," she chirped cheerily, climbing to her feet and walking towards the living room. "Our reservations at Land of Dragons aren't until next month! There's no way he's proposing before then!"

And with that, Aerith stepped out of the kitchen.

When the last echoes of Aerith's voice finally disappeared to be replaced by the quiet thrum of a living room television, Cloud looked up from the kitchen table. He sighed and stared at a distant spot just above Leon's shoulder, twiddling his thumbs awkwardly.

"You mind if I use your washing machine?" he asked. Leon stared at him for a moment, surprised.

"Sure," he said, nodding at an adjoining room. "It's right through there."

"Right," Cloud muttered, climbing to his feet. "Then. I'll go and do that. Thank you."

Leon waited until Cloud had left, and then dropped his head into his hands and sighed.

Demyx sat in the middle of the food court, idly building a pyramid out of ketchup packets. On the other side of the mall, Marluxia was ogling the latest shipment of seeds at the local greenery, Lexaeus was taking a treadmill on a test-ride, and Larxene was drooling over kitchen knives. A hundred feet away, Zexion stood waiting in line at M*ckey D's, buying Demyx a second order of fries.

Across the table, Saïx munched on a salad wrap and stared at him.

"So," Demyx offered, laughing awkwardly. "Nice weather, ain't it?"

The large, blue-haired man lifted a single eyebrow calmly, his face emotionless. He finally lowered his eyes and took another bite out of his wrap. He chewed slowly, swallowed, wiped his mouth, and licked his lips once before speaking.

"It will be a full moon tonight," he said. Demyx stared, and Saïx, thinking that the blond needed clarification, added, "I like watching the moon."

"Oh!" Demyx chirped, smiling timidly. "You're a stargazer?"

Saïx stared at him for a moment, before he narrowed his eyes. "No."

Demyx winced and shot a glance at his boyfriend. Fuck. Zexion was still in line, waiting behind a girl who looked the size of Tinker Bell. She was placing an order large enough to feed a small country. Demyx cursed internally.

"I want to be a cardiologist," Saïx continued. "I like hearts."

Demyx nodded nervously and glared daggers at Zexion. The guy goes and warns him about Saïx and then leaves him alone with the freak? Demyx hadn't even wanted a second order of fries. What right did Zexion have to tell him that he was "-looking a little pale, Demyx; I'll go buy you something else because Saïx is freaking even me out and I want to get away from this awkward atmosphere because I'm a treacherous swine."

The last bit, of course, was Demyx's own addition, but if his Mother had taught him anything, it was how to read between the lines.

"I was debating serial murder and disembowelment for a time, actually," Saïx continued calmly. "You know. Killing random men and preserving their hearts in my freezer. But I decided against it. If I become a cardiologist and surgeon, I actually get paid to chop people open. It works out for everybody."

Demyx sat in mute silence, his eyes the size of chocobo eggs. Saïx swallowed down a gulpful of cola. "That was a joke."

"Hahaha," Demyx said. "Of course it was."

Zexion dropped onto the seat beside him. Saïx fixed him with a glare full of the kind of scorn that could only come from either a failed relationship or residual antipathy based on one party having mandated the death of the other in a previous life, and left.

"He's going to kill me," Demyx said.

"He's not going to kill you," Zexion sighed. "He might order someone else to kill you, but as a general rule Saïx likes his hands clean. He doesn't go in for the kill himself unless he's absolutely sure there's no other choice."

"This is revenge for the creamsicle," Demyx said. "Isn't it."

"The creamsicle was very upsetting," Zexion admitted.

"I don't think upsetting is the word you want to use."

"Taxing, then."

"I don't think you want to use that one, either!" He shuddered. "Are all of your friends like this?"

"Saïx is not my friend," Zexion said. "But if you mean to ask whether the rest of them are likely to be difficult on your nerves, then yes. Probably."

Demyx munched on a fry plaintively. Zexion glanced at him from behind a giant smoothie. "If it makes you feel better, I can barely get along with them most of the time, too."

"It doesn't make me feel better," Demyx said. "Not at all."

But as he said it his foot came up to kick gently at Zexion's, and that was concession enough.

Miles away, Sora fidgeted in the corner booth of Irvine's Café. His face twisted in distress, and he shot a glance out the door.

"Please," he said finally, scooting towards the outside of the seat. "I have to go after him. Roxas is really mad, and I don't know what he'll do or where he's gonna go. I need to-"

"No," Axel interrupted quietly. He lifted a hand to his forehead, closing his eyes and resting his face against his palms. "No, don't. Just…stay here for a bit. I need…I don't know."

Sora twisted his napkin in his slim fingers, but didn't stand up.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Roxas isn't always like that. Please believe me. He's just protective. He…has to be," Sora said, laughing bitterly. "I'm…I'm just a kid, and I never think anything through, and Demyx never thinks at all, and between the three of us Roxas has always been the only one who can fix our problems. Me and Demyx would always cause trouble, and Roxas would go along with it-sometimes he was the one who started it-but he was also the one who made sure we never went too far. It's…" he sighed, bowing his head. "It's not really your fault. Roxas is the way he is because he has to be. It's not your fault."

Riku snorted, bowing his head to glare at his tightly laced hands. "He doesn't have a right to act like that."

Sora glanced up at him sharply. "Yes, he does. Even if you think he's overreacting, he's my brother. That gives him the right."

"Does it?" Riku laughed. "This all started because he thought I was messing with you. Which I wasn't, for the record, but I'm not going to deny the fact that I liked you. Being your brother gives him the right to dislike me. It doesn't give him any right to act the way he's acting."

"You're not trying to understand."

"No," Riku hissed, leaning over the table. "I won't understand. I still want to hang out with you. You're the one I like best. I don't care what the hell Roxas thinks of me or Axel. But you are the ones who started all of this. You're the ones who insist on continuing this. And you're so stuck on your idiot of a sibling that you won't even try to see that!"

"Shut up," Axel said.

Both Riku and Sora turned to him. Axel was bent over the table, a hand on his temple. "Both of you just shut up."

Riku and Sora glanced at each other, then away.

"I'll talk to him," Sora said. "He'll calm down. He always does."

Axel said nothing for a long moment. And then he said, "Do you know what a surgeon general's warning is?"

Sora frowned, confused, and Axel continued.

"It's that caveat they print on the front of cigarette boxes to make sure you know you're killing yourself every time you buy a pack. Nobody ever reads it, you know. They don't care. They're addicted and it feels good. They don't care what some doctor has to say about any of it."

"Axel," Sora said slowly. "What are you talking abo-?"

"Everything about your brother, Sora," Axel said, "is a fucking surgeon general's warning. He can shout at you and scream at you and tell you to stay away and he can hate you, he can fucking hate you but you don't care, you never care because…" Axel trailed off, his mouth twisting down. "Because…"

There was absolute silence in the café for the stretch of what seemed an eternity. Too long after Axel trailed off, Sora spoke.

"Axel?" he asked quietly, his voice a gentle thrum in the still air of the small building. "What do you mean?"

The redhead released a bark of laughter that might have been angry. Would have been angry. Except it wasn't.

"I don't know," Axel said, his voice quivering with an emotion no one could find it in themselves to place. "Literally, I don't know."

Reno glanced through the rearview mirror of his nondescript black car at the man sitting in the backseat. Sephiroth was staring out the window at each house as they drove past. His face was devoid of expression, but something in the line of his lips turned Reno's stomach to liquid.

"You okay back there?" Reno asked, laughing nervously. "You look like you're contemplating mass murder, yo."

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow at him. The curve of his lips deepened, and Reno, not for the first time that ride, wished he hadn't spoken.

"Nothing so quaint," Sephiroth said.

"Quaint," Reno muttered. "If that's the word you wanna use."

"It is," Sephiroth said, and smiled.

Reno cut his eyes away, staring steadfastly out the window, counting the numbers on the houses. Funny. There seemed to be a direct correlation between how high the numbers went and how low his stomach dropped in the pit of his stomach. He should probably get that checked.

Then, finally, the artificial trees lining the side of the road gave way to real ones, and an overflow of flowers and chocobos all but poured onto the sidewalk. It would have been quite pretty if not for the fact that everything in a fifty foot radius seemed to be covered in flour, kool-aid, and lasagna?

"What on earth happened to this place?" Sephiroth asked, unlocking the passenger door and stepping out. "It looks like someone raided a restaurant and dumped every culinary creation imaginable on the lawn."

Reno winced. "You might be right." When the white-haired man frowned at him in question, he shrugged. "Don't ask. Please. You really don't wanna know."

"If it involves Cloud," Sephiroth answered, "I do."

Reno shot him a side-long glance before he trudged his way up the sidewalk and to the front door. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and rang the doorbell once.

A minute later, when it became clear that no one would answer, he rang it again. And again. And again and again and-

"He's not home," Sephiroth said matter-of-factly, his deep voice darkly amused.

Reno glanced at him again. He stopped a sigh deep in his throat, and clenched his fists. "We can check next door," he muttered finally. "The wife of the guy who lives there was supposedly college buddies with Strife. She might know where he is."

Without waiting for an answer, Reno began trudging across the lawn, not caring if he ruined his boots. _I hope he trips on lasagna_ , he thought bitterly.

He took a moment at the front door, staring blankly at the rich color. When this was over, he was gonna pull for a transfer. He was not being paid to do this. Only one person had the right to ask anything like this from him, and it for fuck sure wasn't Sephiroth.

With one final grimace and a deep breath, he crossed his fingers, and rang the doorbell.

There was silence for a moment, before the sound of heavy footsteps reached them, and Leon Leonhart opened the door.

"Reno," he said, nodding in greeting. Behind him, someone yelped quietly, and Leon shot a glance into the house. "The oven's still hot," he called. "Don't touch it without mittens!" He muttered something about being _too old for this_ under his breath before again turning to his visitors, glancing at Sephiroth for a moment before apparently dismissing him. "Did you need something?"

The tall redhead grinned in awkward apology and shrugged. "Yeah, actually. We were wondering if you'd seen Cloud around. Does Tifa know where he is?"

Leon furrowed his brow. He had just opened his mouth to answer, when a low voice called out from behind him, and steady footsteps drew near.

"Leonhart? Aerith wants to know if she should preheat the oven to 350 or 400."

"Oh," Reno said softly. "Shit."

Slowly, almost scared of what he would see, he glanced up at Sephiroth.

The man was smiling.

His back was rimrod straight, his hands loose at his sides. His long, pale hair hung casually over his shoulders. And his face was teasing and light and beautiful, and it looked more sinister than Reno had ever wanted to believe possible.

"Yeah," Leon answered, frowning. "Why?"

"Leonhart?" Cloud shouted. "Where the hell are…"

Cloud stepped into the entranceway, frowning. He opened his mouth to ask what Leon's problem was, but his eyes unconsciously shifted to the two men standing behind his suitor. He frowned in confusion.

One was fairly tall with fire-truck-red hair. If Cloud thought back far enough, he could remember meeting him once at some local picnic or another. He was probably one of Sora's friends, or maybe Kairi's.

The other one…

Cloud took a step back, his eyes growing impossibly wide. He shook his head slowly, bringing a hand up to clutch his throat. His jaw was slack.

The other one…

"Cloud," Sephiroth said. "I'd say it's been a while, but it hasn't."

"No," Cloud choked.

Leon's eyes narrowed, and he turned to stare at Sephiroth, before his eyes once more shot to Cloud, who was looking more and more unsteady with every step backward he took. "Cloud?" he asked, his eyes narrowing. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

Cloud's eyes shot towards Leon's. The emotion in them made Leon take a step forward. "Hey," he said. "Are you all right?"

Cloud shrugged away from Leon's grip and took a step backward. Then another, and another, until his back collided harshly with the wall. "Get out."

Sephiroth did not speak. The smile on his lips widened. His eyes never once left Cloud's.

Leon took another step towards him. "Cloud?"

"No," Cloud said, but he was talking to Sephiroth now. "Get out!"

"You've lost your spine since last we met," Sephiroth said. "When I knew you, you were the bravest boy I'd ever met."

"Shut up!" Cloud shouted. "Get out! Get out!"

He took one last step back, and tripped over his feet, stumbling back into the wall. The force of the jolt tossed the small mirror hanging above his head off the peg keeping it attached to the wall. The edge of it collided with his forehead, and he collapsed to the floor like a broken doll.

"Cloud!" someone shouted. With the darkness seeping around the edges of his vision, though, Cloud wasn't quite sure who.


	14. Chapter 12: Look Here…

**Chapter Twelve: Look Here…**

One could probably argue that 'meeting the parents' is the most terrifying part of dating. Who here has not heard stories of quivering boyfriends offering handshakes to glowering fathers only to be met with guns, grenades, and _The Idiot's Guide to Disembowelment_. Look at Zack. When he tried to ask one Gast Faremis, father of Aerith Gainsborough, for permission to see his daughter, he was poked with a medical syringe containing enough chemicals to knock out a full-grown Bahamut. He woke up nine hours later strapped to a concrete slab with an assortment of drills, IVs, and hammers hanging precariously over him, while droplets of water drip-dropped onto his forehead at five second intervals.

Of course, Demyx had already met Zexion's father-figure. Leon was cool. Demyx liked him. He was about as normal as it was possible to be while still being a Leonhart, which, admittedly, was not very, but it was better than Demyx had hoped for.

He'd thought he was safe. He'd thought he was protected. And then Zexion popped up at his doorway, drove him to Hollow Bastion, and told him that they were gonna meet the friends. Friends. Friends are supposed to be harmless. They're not supposed to be sadists, florists, voted most likely to show up on Hollow Bastion's Most Wanted, or ten feet tall body-building musclemen with protruding chins.

"I'm never forgiving you for this," Demyx mumbled. "What did I ever do to you?"

Zexion shot him a sideways glance. "Ask to go out with me."

"Huh," Demyx muttered. "See if I do that again."

They were sitting on the edge of a large cliff on the outskirts of the city, overlooking a large ravine. Zexion had laid his sweater on the ground earlier, and now the pair sat atop it, their loosely twined hands lying between them.

Larxene and Marluxia had disappeared into the large ruins and abandoned buildings lining the cliffs. Zexion had no idea what they were up to. Lighting fires or getting pregnant, probably. And Lexaeus…well. For Demyx's own sake, he wouldn't worry about what Lexaeus was up to at the moment.

"The worst of it is over," Zexion said simply. "Larxene likes you. She was raving about it earlier. Asked Marluxia why she was attracted to someone like him when she could have someone like you. That's why they're both missing, by the way-Marluxia took it upon himself to show her. And Saix…" Zexion smirked. "You're still alive and in one piece. That's good enough for him."

Demyx stared. "I'm alive," he began, raising an eyebrow. "Therefore, your friends like me."

Zexion nodded.

The blond glowered. "And…you don't see how this is strange?" When Zexion stared blankly at him, uncomprehending, Demyx sighed and rolled his eyes. There was no point in trying to show Zexion how big of a gang of weirdos he was associating with. Zexion would probably just stare at him as if Demyx were the odd one. And anyway, Demyx's mind had already jumped to another train of thought, this one even more upsetting than the last.

The thing is this: while Demyx may have been a flighty idiot who more often than not couldn't remember what he'd eaten for breakfast, he also had a conscience. He was a moral flighty idiot, thank-you-very-much, and moral flighty idiots kept their word. And, as the reader may remember from the previous chapter, Demyx had promised himself that if he ever managed to escape from Larxene alive, he'd kiss Zexion until their lips felt off, just because he felt like it.

Ordinarily, this would not be a problem. Demyx liked kissing. Moreover, he liked kissing people he liked. The issue lay in the fact that Demyx always worked best when he was the one laying down the ground rules. He didn't much like being out of his depth. And while their initial meetings may have gone mostly the way he'd wanted to, what the previous few hours had proven was that if he continued this relationship, he would likely find himself at least 50% of the time being entirely out of his depth.

Demyx was a coward. He did not like being out of his depth.

On the other hand: Zexion.

Would it be worth it, knowing that he would probably be spending just as much time off-kilter as his partner would, if that partner was Zexion.

He leaned forward over his knees, staring up at the sky. "Hey," he said. "Do me a favor."

Zexion shrugged, eyes also looking up. "That would depend on the favor."

"Not what you're supposed to say," Demyx said.

"I'm an impoverished graduate student," Zexion said. "I am limited in my ability to do whatever your heart may desire."

"You can do this one," Demyx said. "Do me a favor."

Zexion turned towards him, eyebrows flat. "What do you gluh."

The 'gluh,' the reader may surmise, signaled the exact moment Demyx got leaned forward and kissed him.

Zexion's eyes went wide.

Vaguely, he could feel Demyx's breath against his cheek, and could see Demyx's open eyes staring directly into his own. Vaguely, he could realize that the lips pressing onto his own were actually moving. Vaguely, he even realized that there was little chance this mashing of lips even counted as a kiss, so awkward and still was it.

Zexion didn't care.

Demyx did. So when, a minute later, the cracking sound of Demyx's resolve echoed across the Great Maw, and one Demyx Strife pulled Zexion to the ground, the reason was pretty understood. Demyx groaned, the sound disappearing into Zexion's mouth. Zexion sprawled atop him, balancing himself precariously upon his elbows, his tongue slipping inside parted lips and sliding against the one it found there.

And it was good, it was good, lips moving against his own, tongue sliding along the inside of his mouth, and then slipping out to trace over Demyx's lips, and Demyx pulled back but it was only to transfer his mouth from Zexion's to Zexion's neck, sucking and nibbling and gliding his fingers under Zexion's shirt, drawing lines and symbols and letters across his stomach, D and E and M; would have kept going, except then Zexion was slipping fingers around the base of his neck, massaging, and the feel sent sweet shivers down Demyx's back. The world was nothing but lips on his neck, collar, chest; nothing but pebbles digging against his back and leaving bruises that he'd later notice and vaguely despise; nothing but hands traveling down. He needed something, anything, and nothing in this world was gonna stop him from getting it.

Nothing except the sound of claps and whistles echoing through the ravine, of course. Not much can stand against claps and whistles. Many a horny teenager can attest to that.

Demyx pulled away almost faster than Zexion did, shooting to his feet and trying to dust off the flush turning his pale cheeks a bright pink. A minute later, when Demyx recovered enough of his dignity to chance a look at the guy who'd interrupted what was surely fast on its way to becoming the most sexually satisfying experience of his life, he peered up. Then choked.

The man who was standing before him could have been called handsome. His features were defined, his body was well-muscled, and the smirk adorning his lips had the potential to make many a girl swoon. Yes, the guy standing before them with an amused gleam in his eyes and his arms crossed over a broad chest could have been handsome. But…

But those sideburns. Oh, Lord God above, those sideburns! There was no way something that fuzzy didn't have a brain.

"Hello," Sideburn-boy greeted, the smirk widening on his face. "You must be the boyfriend."

"Possibly I should have planned this more thoroughly," Zexion muttered, forcefully wiping the glare off his face. He sighed with the air of one who has been much put-upon and turned towards Demyx. "This is Xaldin."

"Charmed," Xaldin said. "I'm assuming that Larxene and the rest have been torturing you, though if you're alive it must have gone well enough."

Demyx forced a nod. If he squinted his eyes and looked towards the sun, he could blur out those horrible hairy monstrosities enough to pretend they were tattoos. "Hah. Yeah," he managed to mumble. "Zexion said the same thing."

"He's been putting up with it for years," Xaldin laughed. "But if you managed to make it past the first two rounds, I think you have a good chance of making it to the finish line."

Almost despite himself, Demyx smiled proudly. And then the words hit him.

"Wait," he squeaked. "What do you mean, the first two rounds?"

Xaldin laughed loudly. The sound boomed through the air like a shotgun retort, and Demyx fought the urge to throw himself over the edge of the cliff. Only the thought of Ars Arcanum kept him alive.

"Did you think it was over?" Xaldin smirked. "You still haven't had a heart-to-heart with the best friend! In fact…" The tall, dreadlocked man smiled, and Demyx took a step backwards. "Why don't we go meet up with Lexaeus right now?"

Demyx tried to reach the car. He really did. Xaldin, of course, caught him mid-air and hauled him back up.

"I hate you," Demyx grumbled.

"That's a shame," Xaldin said, his smirk spreading until it met his horrible, horrible sideburns. "Because we like you."

And so, throwing Zexion's squirming boyfriend over his shoulder, Xaldin walked away.

Miles away, while his oldest brother was being carted kicking and screaming to his dreaded rendezvous with The Best Friend, Roxas sat on a swing set, idly kicking the pebbles beneath his feet. He glared ocular fire at the ground, willing the grass to spontaneously combust. Predictably, it did no such thing.

Minutes later, however, it did make a suitably macabre crunching sound as it was trampled by the large yellow and black sneakers that came to a stop before him. Sora walked forward and took the seat on the swing beside his younger brother, idly pushing off the ground. He kicked, taking the swing higher.

Beside him, Roxas sat quiet.

"Are you all right?" Sora asked finally, still kicking the swing into wider arcs. "You ran pretty far."

Roxas glared harder at the grass beneath his feet, and tried to muffle the twisting feeling in his gut. "It took you long enough to come after me," he said quietly. "I was beginning to think you'd decided to stay with them."

Sora sighed and leaned backward, pumping his legs in time with his swings. "I left a while ago," he said quietly. He bit his lip, debating whether or not to speak, then dove for it. "I never knew that you felt that way. About me and Dem, I mean."

Roxas shrugged. "Should have been obvious," he muttered. "You two blew up the Chemistry lab-"

" _We_ blew up the Chemistry lab," Sora corrected.

"-And we got off with a warning."

"That's because I'm cute."

"It's because I spent two hours of my life sweet-talking Maleficent into donating a new Chem lab. Do you know what I had to go through? She used my DNA to create a new breed of those mutant muskrats she loves so much! And what do I get in return?!"

"My eternal love."

Roxas sighed irritably and began swinging. "Whatever. That's not the point. The point is that I look after you. I…" He groaned and bowed his head, pumping his legs harder. "I want you safe, and I want you happy. If…if Riku only wanted friendship, it would be okay. If…if he really, really loved you, it would be okay. But I don't think he does."

Sora shrugged, looking down. "There's nothing wrong with liking someone."

"It's wrong when he looks at you the way he looks at you," Roxas said. "You have to face it. Any pretense of friendship Riku gives is made with something else in mind. He can sweet talk you and try to convince you, but all he wants in the end is a relationship. You can't get around it."

"It wouldn't matter even if he did."

"Yes it would," Roxas said. "I know you well enough to know that."

Sora stayed quiet a moment. kicking at the pebbles beneath his feet. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know. I'll worry about it later. But that's not what confuses me." When Roxas made a swing past him, Sora's hand shot out and grabbed the metal links, bringing his younger brother to a sharp halt.

"What confuses me," Sora said, making sure that Roxas's eyes were on his own before he began, "is why you hate Axel so much. You can call him an accomplice if you want. But that's not an excuse. Not when neither of them, Axel included, has really done anything wrong."

He leaned back, letting go of Roxas's swing and staring up at the sky.

"You weren't talking to Riku when you said those things at the restaurant," Sora said. "You were looking straight at Axel. The one you were talking to was _Axel_. So my question is: why?"

Roxas stood up after a moment. His hands went into his pockets. "Principle."

"That doesn't explain anything," Sora said, serious. "What do you-"

"People like Riku are scum," Roxas said. "They're low. But people like Axel who do whatever they say…who follow them around like dogs…they're lower. No one should ever go along blindly with things they don't agree with, just because the person dragging them into the situation is someone they're supposed to trust. It's cowardly. It's wrong."

Sora's swing swayed gently in the wind. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he said, "that's what we do."

Roxas jerked. "It's not."

"Going along with your plan to get them back," Sora said. "Going along with our plans, even when you think they're dumb."

"If we really disagreed with each other, we'd stop," Roxas said. "Those things are small. They don't matter. It would be different, if we really thought the other was wrong."

"Maybe," Sora admitted. "But until that happens, we won't know for sure. And that means that, at least for me, what you're saying feels wrong. When you say what you're saying, it feels like you're wrong. And when I think that, what I end up coming back to is that the only reason you're mad at him is because Axel is on the wrong side, and the one he's taken a liking to is you."

Roxas took an angry step backward, but Sora grabbed him by the sleeve, halting him.

"Riku asked Axel to keep you busy. It wasn't the smartest move, but it's what he did. He asked Axel to occupy you. To make you like him. And that's why you're mad, isn't it? Not just because their actions be affecting me. But because they'd also be stringing you along."

"Bullshit," Roxas hissed. Sora ignored him.

"Because I know you, Roxas," he said. "And I know that you might have liked him."

" _Bullshit._ "

"And if you had," Sora continued, taking Roxas's shoulders between two strong hands and squeezing. "Hell! Even if you had just become friends with him, you might have one day discovered that it was all begun because Riku wanted you out of the way. And that would have hurt."

"Shut up, Sora," Roxas whispered.

"But all of that," Sora said, voice rising in supplication, "doesn't matter at all. Because it's not a lie! It's not a facade! If he really likes you, then the least you could do is-"

"Nothing," Roxas said.

He wrenched his arm away, bringing his brother's tirade to a halt. "Nobody owes another person their friendship. Nobody owes another person their love. If he really likes me, then I feel bad for him, but I still owe him nothing." He turned. The wind blew his hair back. "This ceasefire has come to an end," he said. "I'm not gonna stop until I've showed those two exactly who they've fucked with. And if you don't want to help, then that's okay." He swallowed, standing back up and turning away. "If you wanna go with them…if you…well, it's okay. But I'm going to do everything…everything I can to make sure that you don't get hurt."

He was met with silence.

Roxas closed his eyes and clenched his fists, taking a step away. There was nothing he could do now if Sora had decided against helping. He'd have to work alone. He could, he really could. He'd-

There was the sound of footsteps behind him and suddenly an arm wrapped itself around his shoulders. He looked sideways in surprise. Sora stood there. His face was solemn. But his eyes were warm, and there was nothing Roxas could ask for beyond that.

"It's what we do," Sora said. "You're my brother. It's what we do."

Roxas thought about how he was meant to respond. Before he could figure it out, though, Sora smiled. "And hey-the best friends are made through adversity. If all of us are meant to be friends, it'll happen sooner or later. Don't scowl at me like that, Roxas, you never know what will happen. Everything will work out soon enough. Might as well have some fun before it does."

Roxas stared at him, face blank for a moment.

And then he smiled.

"Now," Sora said, strolling forward. "All we need is a plan. Something huge. I wanna go down in history for this. We're on a limited budget, though. What do you think? We could paint their house purple. We could order a hundred pizzas and deliver them to their doorstep. Or we could… _Pmf!_ "

The ' _Pmf_ ' was the sound one made when a tiny, two year old ball of energy bowled into one at roughly the speed of a charging bull. This charging bull was blonde and tiny and had a set of lungs worthy of an opera singer. She was also Cid Highwind's little girl.

Sora looked down at the giggling toddler attached to his kneecap and frowned curiously. "Rikku? What…what are you doing here?"

Roxas rolled his eyes. "Gee, Sora," he muttered. "Why would a two-year old be at a park? It makes no logical sense."

Sora stuck his tongue out at his younger brother childishly and picked up the shrieking toddler, swinging her up onto his shoulders. "Where's your Papa, Rikku?" he asked. "You can't be here all by yourself!"

The little girl laughed merrily and shook her head. She looked around once, then smiled, pointing a finger to her right.

A stocky middle-aged man stood there, a broad smirk on his face. "Hey, boys," Cid Highwind called gruffly, the smirk pulling the corners of his lips up in an expression that terrified young children. "Fancy meeting you here."

Cloud fell.

He did not arc through the air. He did not slump gracefully onto the floor in an aesthetic pile of limbs and hair. Cloud crumpled, shards of glass flying around him, and did not move.

Leon took a step forward, then another, stumbling. Then a loud, resounding gasp filled the room, and all eyes turned to stare at Aerith, who stood at the foyer entrance, her green eyes wide.

Aerith moved forward, dropping to her knees beside Cloud. She leaned over him, opening his eyelids to check his pupils. "Someone tell me what happened."

Silence greeted her, before Leon shook himself out of his daze. "I don't know," he said. "Cloud saw him. He panicked."

Aerith looked up sharply, mouth opening to demand a better explanation. Then her gaze shifted. Sephiroth was standing there, face blank and posture calm. His eyes never left the unconscious form lying on the ground.

"Se…Sephiroth?" Aerith stuttered. "Is that you?"

Sephiroth glanced up at her, then turned back to Cloud. "I came visit Cloud," he said. "We met at my work a few days ago. I decided to drop in for a visit, and catch up with an old friend."

Aerith's eyes flickered for a moment, the lines around them going hard with suspicion. She glanced at Reno, then back to Sephiroth, her jaw going tight.

Then the expression was gone, and she dropped her eyes to Cloud.

"I haven't seen you in years," she murmured. "Not since Cloud moved. Not since we…" She shook her head, and stood, doing her level best to drag Cloud up with her. "Sephiroth, help me get him to the living room. I don't want him to wake up here."

Leon blinked. Then his eyes went narrow. "He's not touching him," he said.

"Sephiroth is a friend," Aerith said. "He's one of Cloud's oldest friends."

"I don't care if he and Strife were best pals for their entire childhood," Leon said. "The reason Cloud's lying on the floor comatose is because he was so terrified of this bastard that he slammed himself into the wall just to try and-"

"Do not attempt to leave," Sephiroth interrupted sharply, staring behind him. Reno flinched, and shot despairing eyes at the door. And he'd been so close, too. Just three more steps and he'd have made it out the house, to his car and away from this bunch of freaks and their whole soap opera.

"You're my ride," Sephiroth said calmly. "You're not allowed to leave until I do."

"That works out well," Leon said. "Because you are leaving now."

"No," Sephiroth said. "I'm not."

"The both of you, be quiet," Aerith said. "I'm not interested in whatever problems you have with each other at the moment. You can explain what's going on later. Right now I want the both of you to settle down and help me carry Cloud into the living room."

Reno inched backwards. Only two more feet-

"You too, Reno," Aerith said calmly. "I'll need your help to contain these two if they get out of hand."

The redhead wilted.

It took two hours and an excessive amount of hysterics before Demyx managed to extricate himself from the clutches of the best friend, and when it was over, he couldn't much remember exactly what had gone on. He had the vaguest suspicion that there had been hypnotism. Extortion may or may not have been involved. He was relatively sure that at one point or another he had been coerced into giving a list of character references, accompanied with the assurance that each person on the list would be called forthwith. But most of it had been a blur. He could only clearly remember one thing: Lexaeus leaning towards him, and saying the word 'serious.'

It probably would help, from both a narrative and character standpoint, if Demyx could only remember the context of that word.

He stumbled back towards the place he'd last seen Zexion, feeling somewhat dizzy, and dizzier when he realized Zexion was still sitting there, leaning back against the ground, arms pillowing his head, and staring up at the stars. The pit of his stomach curled; it felt suddenly somehow both hot and cool, and he couldn't work out whether the sensation was unpleasant or only new. Demyx made his way across the distance between them, bending down. "Hey," he said.

Zexion slid his eyes slowly to him, face a mask. "Hello," he said. "Are you done?"

"I'd assume so," Demyx said. "Can't much remember what the hell your Viking warrior of a bff talked to me about through the haze of mindless terror, but he let me go. I assume we're done."

"All right," Zexion said. "Come on, then. I promised your mother I'd have you home by ten."

He sat up, beginning to lift himself onto his feet. Demyx caught his arm before even he himself could really register the movement and pulled him up.

There was absolutely no reason that should have made the mask of Zexion's face slip. But Zexion's eyes went a little wide, and his pupils went a little wider. For a moment, he looked quite young. For a moment, Demyx saw exactly the reason why someone like Zexion, cold and odd and so self-sufficient Demyx often had to muffle strains of envy, had friends willing to interrogate boyfriends for him.

"W-well," Demyx said, stumbling over the words before he could stop himself. "Let's go. Don't want to piss off my mom."

They walked to the car slowly, standing a few inches farther away from each other than Demyx thought they'd stood the last time they were together. They got in silently, honking once in farewell to Lexaeus and Xaldin when they pulled out of the dirt road. Demyx stared out the window.

"Where did Pinky and Scary go?" he asked, more because the quiet was unnerving him than because he actually wanted to know. "I was sure they'd want to wish us the best before sending us off, too."

Zexion shrugged. "Marluxia got jealous," he said. "We probably won't be seeing either of them for the next week."

"He's the type to get jealous?"

"Not really," Zexion said. "But Larxene is flightier than he is. He hasn't realized yet she'll probably stay loyal."

Demyx turned again towards the window. "I don't like that," he said, quieter than he meant to. "If a person's the sort to get jealous over every little thing, I don't know why they bother with relationships in the first place."

"People can't always help it," Zexion said. "It's difficult to help what you feel. The important thing is not acting on it."

"That can be hard."

"It's not impossible," Zexion said. "Anything can be controlled."

"And you?" Demyx asked.

Zexion didn't respond.

"You," Demyx clarified. "Do you get jealous?"

Zexion was driving, and couldn't really afford to turn to him. Not without pulling over, at least, and it was already late enough in the day that if they wanted to make curfew, they wouldn't have enough time for that. He did take a moment to reply, though.

"Anything can be controlled," Zexion repeated. "It doesn't matter whether or not I'm the sort of person to get jealous. You can simply rest assured in the knowledge that I'm never going to take it out on you."

"Nice."

"No," Zexion said, and he sounded somehow faraway. "Niceness has nothing to do with that, at all."

They descended into silence. Demyx tried to figure out what to say. But his head had gotten stuck on that word- _serious,_ Lexaeus had said, s _omethingsomethingsomething is serious_ -and he couldn't move past it enough to concentrate fully on continuing a conversation that seemed to be occurring under the surface of what Zexion was actually saying.

Zexion spoke first. "Did you have fun?"

And that was enough to jerk him out of his head. He glared. "No."

"Ah," Zexion said, something that almost looked like a smirk pulling up his lips. "Well. It's over with, at least."

The blond glared harder. "Your friends are horrifying," he muttered. "Did you know that before Saix decided he wanted to be a heart surgeon when he grew up, he was debating serial murder? I was eating with a serial murderer!"

"He hasn't actually done anything yet," Zexion said. "Xemnas has him on a pretty tight leash."

Demyx wondered how on earth Professor Xemnas was connected to this band of weirdos, sighed, looking out the window. "Your best friend's smart, at least," he murmured. "Xaldin, too. They…they're intelligent."

Zexion smiled. "I'm glad you think so. For the record, I think you made a decent impression on them."

Demyx wasn't sure about that. But he couldn't make enough sense of his twisting head to be able to reply.

"What is it?" Zexion asked.

Demyx opened his eyes. Zexion was glancing at him. His face had gone once more a bit like a mask.

"Pull over."

Zexion's brow furrowed. "Why?"

"Just pull over."

Zexion's mouth thinned, but he flicked his turn signal and pulled onto the shoulder anyway, bringing the car to a park and flicking on the emergency lights just in case. He turned to Demyx. "Are you alright?"

 _Serious_ , Lexaeus had said. _He's very serious._

Demyx had never been serious.

It was very easy for someone like him to hurt someone who was serious.

Demyx looked at him. Zexion looked back. Demyx thought that, even through the dark, he could see Zexion look at him with an emotion that resembled concern.

He leaned over the stick, took Zexion's face between his hands, and kissed him.

Zexion responded quickly, more quickly than he had last time, opening up to him and tangling a hair in Demyx's hair, tighter than Demyx would have expected of him, not as tight as Demyx wanted him to. Demyx pushed himself onto his knees, squirming between the two front seats and pulling Zexion with him, until Demyx sat rucked up in the back and Zexion was leaning over him, firm and heavy and very good. He slid his hips up, slipped a calf around one of Zexion's, and if Zexion didn't exactly grind down, he also didn't push Demyx away, and that was good.

Those lips moved to his neck. Demyx muffled a groan and tipped his head back. And then he stopped.

"Hey," he said. "Zexion."

Zexion was sucking bruises into Demyx's neck, and didn't respond.

"Hey," Demyx repeated. "Uh. Sorry for interrupting. You look like you're having fun down there."

"Shut up," Zexion said, drawing the skin beneath his lips into his mouth and sucking for all he was worth.

"Yeah. Sorry. It's just that there's a crow sitting on the windshield. It's staring at me. It's sorta freaking me out. I, uh…don't think I can get it back up."

Zexion groaned.

Cloud blinked his eyes open blearily, and automatically closed them. Everything hurt. His blood was pounding a steady beat into his eardrums, and the voices growling quietly at each other from the corner of the room was pulling at the tight knot of muscles between his eyes, worsening the headache he was fast on his way to developing.

Slowly, he turned over onto his stomach. Who was speaking?

"The…you…be quiet. Cloud…lying on the couch…doesn't need this."

Cloud closed his eyes, and re-opened them, struggling to focus. The voice had been soft and distinctly feminine. Aerith?

"Ae…Aerith," he rasped.

There was a small gasp from the corner, and soft footsteps neared hurriedly. He squinted his eyes, Aerith's form clear now. "Don't move," she said, quieter even than normal-consideration for his headache, probably. "You don't have a concussion, but I don't want you sitting up."

He hadn't been moving much, but he subsided fully. "What happened?"

"You hit your head," Aerith said. "I don't know about the rest."

Cloud didn't think he currently cared about the rest. His thoughts still felt hazed and unclear. Beside him, Aerith climbed to her feet.

"Wait here," she said, as if he were likely to get up. "I'll get you some water."

Her footsteps receded a few moments later. It took only a half minute before another head entered his field of vision, though.

"Leonhart," he said. "What are you doing here?"

Leon took a few seconds to answer. "It's my house," he said finally. His voice sounded tighter than Cloud could remember hearing it. "You were visiting earlier. We carried you over when you fell."

Cloud opened his mouth to ask 'we?' But before he could, a background movement caught his eye, and his gaze shifted past Leon and fell on the person who stood at the rear of the room.

And in his head, a little voice said 'no.'

It took a moment before he realized he'd also said the word aloud.

Sephiroth did not respond. Neither did Leon. But that was fine. He shouldn't have expected them to.

Cloud pushed himself up.

"I wouldn't do that," Sephiroth said. "You nearly concussed yourself. Right now the thing you need most is rest."

Cloud splayed his fingers on the couch to support himself. He kept his eyes turned down.

"This isn't my house," he said.

Beside him, Leon-tense, thrumming, full of something Cloud couldn't recognize and didn't much care to-said, "I'll take you back when you're well."

"No," Cloud said, and his eyes were on Sephiroth's, wide and unseeing, but at least no one could say he wasn't meeting them, at least no one could call him a coward. "This isn't my house, so I can't make you go. But I can."

He was on his feet before either of them quite realized that was what he intended to do. Leon stepped toward him, made to close a hand around his wrist. Cloud looked up at him. And he couldn't tell what expression he was wearing, couldn't feel his facial muscles enough to know what they'd settled into, but whatever was on his face made Leon take a step back.

Leon did not turn away from him. But he did say, "Go."

He wasn't talking to Cloud. Over his shoulder, Cloud watched Sephiroth. Watched the veneer of his face.

"I don't think," Sephiroth said, "that's something that I'm quite willing to do."

Leon turned towards him. "This is my house. You're going to go."

"Your house," Sephiroth agreed. "But my childhood friend inside of it."

"I wouldn't care if you were his fucking husband," Leon said, and his voice was level and Cloud couldn't see his face, but there was something in the tone of it that would have probably stiffened Cloud's spine, if he were at all able to feel anything right now but strangely, oddly detached. "He doesn't want you here. I don't want you here. You're going to go."

Sephiroth didn't say anything for a long time. He didn't move. He did nothing but stand there, silent, eyes fixed just as assuredly on Cloud's as Cloud's were on his. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear someone talking on a phone. A little further, he could hear the quiet sounds of Aerith in the kitchen. Was she listening to this, Cloud wondered. Was she listening to the way that Cloud spoke.

Finally, Sephiroth straightened. Cloud hadn't been aware he was slouched.

"Ten years," he said. "Consider that a gift."

And then he was gone.

It took a very long time before Cloud's heart stopped pounding through his chest. It took a lot longer before he was able to convince himself that it had entirely been out of fear.

Zexion pulled into the Strife driveway an hour later. He hazarded a glance at Demyx. After the issue with the crow, they'd gone back to driving. Zexion had momentarily thought that Demyx would want to continue. But he hadn't made any move to, and if they wanted to get back by ten, they wouldn't be able to afford any more lost time.

"Come on," Zexion said, undoing the belt. "I'll walk you to your door."

Demyx nodded, absently almost. He'd been somewhat absent for the last half hour. Truthfully, he'd been somewhat absent since he'd come back from talking to Lexaeus. Zexion didn't know what that meant. He was only mildly positive he wanted to.

They walked toward the door in thoughtful silence, coming to a stop only when they reached the porch. Demyx turned towards him. Zexion thought about what he would be wise to say. "I'm sorry," he said instead. "I know that probably wasn't enjoyable for you."

"If you'd wanted it to be enjoyable, you'd have taken me somewhere else," Demyx said, but he didn't sound upset. He didn't sound much of anything. Thoughtful. That was the only word Zexion could use. It wasn't a word that suited Demyx very well, Zexion thought, then chastised himself for it; he didn't know Demyx. There wasn't any kind of description he could with any surety say. But thoughtful was what he was.

Demyx looked at him. For the first time since Demyx had kissed him, he met his eyes.

"It's good that you took me, anyway," Demyx said. "I-it's good."

Zexion didn't know what to say to that, and hated that fact. So he did the only thing he could under the circumstance: he leaned in, pushing Demyx gently against his front door, and kissed him.

And then that front door opened, with the end result of both Demyx and Zexion falling backwards onto the floor in a tangle of limbs and tee-shirt sleeves.

Cloud peered down at them absently, then stepped over their prone bodies, a huge trash bag held in his arms. He walked forward, deposited the bag inside the trash can, and disappeared back inside.

Demyx stood up a moment later, brushing himself off. "Sorry," he said, flushed and more present than he'd been since they'd left the cliffs. "That was a little-"

"Don't worry about it," Zexion said, and meant it. He'd been interrupted three times in the last hour. He was getting used to it. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," Demyx agreed, taking a step back. He managed an awkward smile up at his boyfriend and slowly closed the door.

Sighing, he raised a hand to his lips.

Dammit.

He shook his head to rid himself of the thoughts crashing against each other, walked down the hallway, and stopped at the kitchen. Cloud was standing there, wearing Demyx's apron and scrubbing something off the floor. The room looked like a war zone.

"Dude," Demyx said in awe. "What happened?"

Cloud barked an unsteady laugh, but didn't look up from his spot on the floor. "Yuffie happened," he answered quietly. "Ten minutes. She did this in ten minutes. It's taken me the last hour to get this much done. Just goes to show you that she probably was a ninja in a past life."

Demyx frowned, squatting beside his cousin. Cloud's voice hadn't sounded much different than it usually did, and on a normal day, even if it had Demyx wouldn't have cared. Demyx was selfish. Demyx was prone to disappearing into his own world. But this wasn't a normal day; Demyx wanted to get outside of his own head, not disappear inside of it. That meant he paid more attention to others than he normally did. It meant that, although Cloud's voice hadn't sounded much different, it still sent instinct curling in the pit of Demyx's stomach to tell him that something was wrong.

"I'll help you clean, if you want me to," he said. "Don't be upset."

Cloud released another bark of laughter and shrugged. "Rinoa called," he said, in place of an answer. "She said she was working overtime, and is just going to rent a hotel room in the city so she doesn't have to drive at night. Sora and Roxas called and said they were spending the night at Hayner's. The place is all ours."

"This isn't a place," Demyx said. "It's a catastrophe."

"It's my home," Cloud said, and that note was in his voice again, deep and still and horrible. "It's my home."

They cleaned in silence for a few minutes, scrubbing at the stains on the floor and Windex-ing everything in sight, before Cloud spoke.

"You and the neighbor are getting along."

Outside of your head, Demyx told himself. You just stay outside of your head.

"I guess," he answered.

"That doesn't sound very enthusiastic."

"You're older than I am, and as much as I like you we're not exactly friends," Demyx said. "I wouldn't sound enthusiastic even if I were."

Cloud kept quiet for a moment. Then, "You can talk to me about it, if you want."

"Thanks," Demyx said. "But there's not much to talk about. I like him. We're dating. I don't know what to say besides that."

"You talk more with your brothers."

"They're my brothers," Demyx said. "They've been with me for all my life. Don't ask me to pour it all out to you just because you don't want to be alone in your head right now, either."

Cloud scrubbed at the floor. "Alone in your head," he said. "That's one way to put it, I guess."

It would serve Demyx better, perhaps, if he didn't respond. But this was Cloud. The only reason he'd stayed here was to help Cloud.

"I'm not serious," he said.

Cloud shrugged, rubbed harder. "That's not a bad thing."

"Zexion is serious," Demyx clarified. "I don't think I can be serious."

Kool-aid, flour, something Demyx couldn't for the life of him identify. "Do you want to be?"

"I don't know. Mostly I don't. I like who I am. I don't think there's anything wrong with not wanting to tie myself to anyone when I'm only nineteen. But that's why a compromise is a compromise, isn't it. Because it means I can't just think only of me."

Quiet. "Is he pushing you to be serious?"

"No," Demyx said. "We've known each other for days. If he were pushing me towards anything, I would bail in ten seconds flat, no matter how much I like him. But it'll come up, if this lasts. He'd want me to pay more attention to him. He'd want me to stop screwing around."

"Do you want to?"

"I don't know," Demyx said. "It's been days. I like him. A lot. That doesn't mean I know whether I'll still like him six months from now. I don't know. I don't."

Neither of them spoke for a moment, lost in their thoughts or their cleaning or the strange, anxious feeling both of them felt. Then, finally, Cloud spoke. "You're not going to change. Whether you become more serious or not. You could do it, if you want. You don't have to. But if it's what you want. You could do it. But _you_ , whoever the hell you want to be, aren't going to change. He'll accept that or he won't. You'll accept him or you won't. You'll be happy with each other, or you'll drive each other crazy but still be happy with each other, or you'll drive each other crazy and won't be happy with each other. You won't know yet. Just don't be with someone you don't want. If you're not going to be happy with him, don't be with him at all."

On another day, Demyx might have let that go. He wanted a distraction; he didn't want Cloud to be upset; there were times and places to pick fights, and here, kneeling on the floor and scrubbing _eau de ninja_ off the kitchen tiles, wasn't it. But it had been a difficult day. That meant that instead of keeping his stupid mouth shut, like he should have, Demyx said, "that's not something that sounds very convincing from you."

Cloud's hands paused. "What," he asked, "is that meant to mean?"

"It means that there is not one person in this family who hasn't made a complete mess of their love life," Demyx said, "and I wouldn't take advice from any of them. But at least all of them know enough to know that no one in the world is ever going to be as important to them as they themselves are."

"And what," Cloud said again, "is that meant to _mean_?"

"It means that I know what you keep in your closet," Demyx said, "under the clothes and the books, where you think no one will find it because you don't want anyone to know exactly how much of a mess you've turned yourself into. And that means I would make any one of them, brainless as they are, sole arbiters of my every romantic decision for the rest of my life before I took even the smallest piece of advice from you."

Cloud blinked once, very, very slow. Then, quietly, he climbed to his feet and walked up to his room. The door shut quietly behind him.

Demyx stayed there, well into the night, still scrubbing, and tried to work out whether saying that had made him feel better or worse.

Cid ran an auto shop. It was a fairly wealthy business, and his consumer base in Hollow Bastion numbered in the thousands, not counting the companies who depended upon him for a wide range of mechanical watchamacallits and automatic doo-dads.

This is not relevant. It does however, explain why Cid had a ton of metallic junk lying around his shop. It explains why he had one big-ass welding machine. And it explains why Cid employed a number of civilians who were more than willing to wake up in the middle of the night and start working on his latest project, no questions asked-as long as they were promised triple-overtime and a slice of Shera Highwind's homemade chocolate cake.

It was the work of a few hours for Cid Highwind, his band of employees, and the two youngest Strife brothers to complete what they had set out to complete. By four in the morning, their project had been completed and stood, in all its glory, in Cid's workshop. A half hour later, it had been carted from Hollow Bastion to the small, aesthetic suburb of Radiant Garden, and had been deposited onto one lush, pretty little lawn.

Cid, Roxas, and Sora congratulated themselves on a job well done, and disappeared into the night.

Riku woke up blearily, the sun beaming nauseatingly happy rays of light into his eyes. He groaned and rolled out of bed, clambering slowly to his feet and making his way downstairs. Today was the first day the morning newspaper would be arriving, and he wanted to be sure to read it as soon as possible. Nothing like a literary trek into the workings of the outside world to distract himself from the fact that he had no love life.

He slowly ambled down the stairs and walked past the living room. And then he backtracked. Leon was sitting there, gazing off into space, looking even more emo than normal.

"Oi, Leon," Riku began slowly. "What happened to you?"

There was silence for a minute, before the brunet in question ran a shaking hand through his hair. "What time did you get back last night?" he mumbled. "I didn't hear you come in."

Riku shrugged. "I was with Axel till late. We went over to his house and played some video games. Mom and Yuffie found me walking home around midnight and they drove me the rest of the way. Now, for real: what happened to you?"

Leon shrugged, but made no move to answer. His adopted son sighed irritably, walking down the hallway and out the door. Shit. If Leon wanted to wallow in self-pity and morbidity, then who was he to stop him? Look at Riku! Roxas hated his freakin' guts and refused to let Sora see him! And he was continuing onward anyway, making his way towards a better and brighter future, keeping in touch with the world outside of Radiant Garden even as his heart shriveled up and died! Tifa would be proud!

Riku shoved the door open and bent down to pick up the paper. He stood up. And froze.

"M-mom?" he stuttered, calling inside the house. "M…Mom!"

There was the sound of shuffling feet, and Tifa appeared in her bathrobe. "What is it, honey? What's…oh. Oh." She tilted her head to the side and squinted in total shock. "Uh. Leon? Zexion? Would you two come here for a minute?"

It took a while, but Leon finally managed to tear himself away from his comfort zone and to the doorway, Zexion on his heels. They took one look at the object adorning their lawn and froze.

"Y'know," Tifa said conversationally. "It might be a rocket."

Zexion snorted, his eyes never once leaving the structure. "Yes. Except it's flesh colored."

Tifa whistled, looking the entity up and down. "I must admit, I'm impressed," she muttered. "It makes you wonder how the hell they managed to pull this off."

Riku stumbled forward as if in a daze. He leaned over and peered intently at the side of the object. "It…" He took a breath and licked his suddenly dry lips. "It looks like it was welded together. Look. This section says 'Made in Taiwan.'"

"The white paint seeping from the top is a nice touch," Tifa murmured in awe.

"I don't know," Zexion managed. "I think my favorite part is the red graffiti on the side. Y'know. The bit that says _not to scale_."

One house over, Demyx walked outside and bent to pick up the morning paper. He glanced over at the neighbor's house, did a double-take, and froze mid-bend. He stood there, ass in the air, for a good minute. And then he narrowed his eyes and spoke.

"Oi, Zexion?" he called. "Is there a reason you have a ten-foot tall dick on your lawn?"

Zexion flushed. Tifa snorted. Riku spluttered. Leon just stood there, wobbled for a moment, then slowly turned to stare at his youngest son.

"Riku," he snarled. "You're disowned."

Riku squawked.


	15. Chapter 13: Well, No

**Chapter Thirteen: Well, No**

The human psyche has an instinctive tendency towards instant gratification. It's why you see horny lovers across the country falling onto beds, bathtubs, kitchen tables, office desks, and trampolines within five minutes of even looking at each other. Never mind the fact that nine months later those horny lovers will be looking at a baby and naming him after celestial bodies and weather phenomena. You get your kicks while you can get 'em, and you ignore the diapers, cans of Gerber, and juvenile death glares in the not-so-distant future.

This has very little to do with anything, except that instant gratification is what makes gambling so seductive. Imagine: you step into a casino a pauper, and exit wearing a fur coat, a feather boa, and shades, followed by fifteen nubile young beauties ready to bathe in a fountain of George Washington's, or relevant currency.

Of course, this is a myth. You can't actually walk into Luxord's Casino and exit richer than you were when you stepped in. In fact, according to _Royale Monthly, Issue 101, January,_ the average plebian walking into 10 of Spades emerged penniless. Luxord liked to call it the _Country Song Syndrome_ : you walk in a happy man, and walk out lacking everything you ever owned, and a few you didn't.

The group of adults sitting in a darkened room around a circular table, however, chose to ignore this. Luxord himself had summoned them here today, after all. This was no row of slot machines or black jack or pachinko. No. They were playing for higher stakes than that.

A tall, slim man sat delicately in his high-backed chair, his legs crossed almost daintily. "Smee," he purred, pouring a dollop of milk into his cup of tea. "Would you read the report, please?" The man turned to his companions, nodding once at the tall woman sitting regally across from him. "I took the liberty of compiling a list of the occurrences on the Strife/Leonhart front over the past few days, with Luxord's approval, of course. I assume you all have a working knowledge of at least part of the tomfoolery these two families have been engaged in, but I ask you to suffer it for the moment. Smee?" A pause, during which no one was forthcoming. The man, known reverentially as one C. Hook, twitched. "Smee!"

"Aye aye, Cap'n," a short, elderly man piped up, waddling inside. He adjusted his glasses and peered closely at a sheet of paper clutched in his hands. As the reader must remember, however, the group in question is sitting in a darkened room, and poor Smee really has no clue how he's supposed to read the sheets.

The tall, proud-looking lady sitting proudly in her ornate seat groaned and snapped her fingers. Instantly, the room was bathed in an eerie green glow, thrusting the occupants of the room into stark relief. Smee didn't notice; he huffed once in happiness, adjusted his glasses, and began to read.

"The misadventures of the families Strife and Leonhart," he began in his high voice. "As catalogued by Bartholomew Quigley Smeethington."

The large, beefy man directly to his right snorted. Smee blew him a raspberry, and continued.

"Approximately six days ago," he wheezed. "The Leonhart family moved into the house once belonging to a certain Zack Fair-"

This time, it was the tall, pale man sporting a wispy blue Mohawk who laughed none-too-discreetly. "Fair?" he snorted, waggling his fingers in amusement. "The little guy's last name is Fair?"

Smee huffed indignantly. "I'm sorry, sir, but I don't see how Zachary's last name has anything to do with-"

"Really?" the burly man to Smee's right grinned. "Kid sure kept it a secret well enough. I was starting to think that the brat didn't have a last name."

"He does," the mohawked figure laughed. "It's just a terrible one."

"May I contin-"

"Imagine the boy's life during kindergarten. 'Now, Zack,'" the large man coughed through his guffaws. "'Share your toys! You're not being Fair!'"

Smee took a large breath, his face turning red. "If you are all done interrupting, the Strifes planted a ten-foot tall penis on the Leonhart's front lawn!"

All heads swiveled towards him, raising identical eyebrows. "Say what?" the huge, sack-clothed covered man asked curiously. Smee huffed and smoothed out his shirt irritably.

"If I may," he said. "The pranks began with the three youngest Strife boys painting a crude message onto the backs of the Leonhart Dalmatians. It then escalated, the mischief continuing with paint-balling, phone calls, and a giant phallus." Ignoring the guffaws of the two ruffians slouching in their chairs, and the quiet chuckles of a slim man sitting demurely to his left, he continued.

"Since then, the juvenile hi-jinks have continued. On day four, Riku Leonhart and Axel Tseng were approached by a herd of youngsters looking for information about the flyers the Strife brothers passed around. They disappeared with them into a public restroom. No one knows what happened in that restroom, but when Riku and Axel walked out, they were both holding thick wads of cash. The children stumbled out an hour later carrying limited edition Ars Arcanum memorabilia, in tears. The children, not the memorabilia. An hour later, Mssrs. Leonhart and Tseng placed a large order at Marluxia's Florists. When the Strife family woke up the next day, their house was surrounded by vines, hedges, trees, and a wall of sentient petunias."

A curvaceous woman chuckled, twirling a short lock of wavy white hair. Smee ignored her, continuing.

"On day five, the Strife family retaliated by setting up a trip wire, which they affixed to the Leonhart's front door. When Mr. Squall stepped out of his house, sprinklers turned on, fireworks launched, and a hundred and one puppies were released from their pen and into the neighborhood.

"The Leonharts, in an indignant huff, then attempted to paint the Strife house neon green on day six. They were not particularly successful. They had already finished the rear and right facing walls when Axel accidentally stepped into a trap the Strife brothers had engineered. He fell through a layer of fake grass and into a four-foot deep hole. The noise alerted young Roxas Strife, who woke up, opened his window, took one look at his green house, and apparently set Vincent the Chocobo on them. Young Vincent apparently did not appreciate being ordered around by his least favorite person. He then proceeded to chase Axel and Riku across the neighborhood before they jumped through the Tseng's closed living room window. Mrs. Elena, obviously, was not quite happy about this, but that's a story for another time." He took a deep breath, folded the sheet, and closed his eyes.

"This, of course," he recited serenely, clasping his hands before him in an angelic gesture, "does not include the all-out brawl of forty minutes ago, when Riku Leonhart accidentally dumped a trashcan-full of egg batter on Sora Strife. He was aiming for the younger brother, who, upon seeing Sora dripping yolk, clocked Riku upside the head, thus beginning the melee to end all melees. Final injuries...Axel: two black eyes, singed eyebrows, hair three inches shorter, and a full body rash; Roxas: a split lip, neon green pants, and a back covered in egg shells; Riku: one black eye, numerous scrapes and bruises, and a contusion on his coccyx. Sora: no injuries." He coughed once. "End report."

There was silence, before the slim, regal lady leaned forward. "The boy was uninjured?" she asked curiously. Smee nodded.

"Yessum," he said, eyes wide. "Little Sora is rumored to be unusually quick. My sources say that he was able to dodge every kick, blow, and egg sent his way with a dexterity previously only seen in video games."

The tall woman sitting straight in her chair nodded. "He must be watched," she murmured, her stately voice echoing across the walls of the house. She turned to the gentleman sprawled majestically in his ornate seat and nodded. "Thank you, Captain, for the wealth of information your little underling supplied us with."

The man answered her with a bow, and she then turned to her companions, smiling.

"And now, friends," she exhaled, one slim, arched eyebrow raising on her face. "We place our bets."

"Shit!"

Rinoa gasped. "Roxas!" she said. "I did not teach you to use foul language in this house! If you're going swear in front of me, you might as well pull out the big guns." To punctuate her statement, she ripped an egg shell out of his back with a pair of pliers.

"Fuck!"

Rinoa smiled. "That's better," she said. "Though I'd rather you think happy thoughts. If you're gonna scream something, you might as well scream about _sunshine, daisies, and butter mellow_." She cleaved a particularly large shard from his shoulder blade. Roxas took one look at the bloodied chocobo egg shell and swooned.

Beside them, Sora and Demyx glanced at each other, wincing. The fight earlier had not quite gone as well as it could have. It had begun with Riku and Axel creeping up to Roxas, carrying a huge pail of egg batter between them. They'd been planning on dumping the batter onto Blondie's head, and then running. At the moment of truth, however, Sora had made some strange sort of running leap clear across the yard and had intercepted the contents of said pail. Using his own body, of course.

Roxas had taken one look at his brother, released a mighty war cry, and tackled both enemies in a move that sent them all to the floor. No one was quite sure where the chipped egg shells had come from. Sora's money was on poor Vinnie, who had emerged from the vet clinic a bit meaner than he'd been when he entered. Now when he moved, he looked like a chaotic black and red fanged shadow. Cloud was talking about suing.

"I honestly can't believe you boys," Rinoa said. "You and your younger brother are taking this a bit far, don't you think? I realize that your feelings have been very hurt-"

"Mother!"

"-but this is getting a bit out of control. Look at me! I'm pulling egg shells out of my baby boy's back!"

On the bed, Roxas groaned, stirring slightly. Rinoa looked down at him and smiled affectionately. "You just stay right there, Roxas," she whispered. "I'll be back in a few minutes to pour rubbing alcohol and salt water all over your battle wounds."

Roxas's body convulsed, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Rinoa sighed and reached down to ruffle her youngest son's messy head of blond hair, standing up and motioning Sora and Demyx to follow her out of the room. When Rinoa had closed the door behind her, though, she rounded on her two eldest sons. "Now, look," she said. "I don't mind forcing the two of you to uproot the giant hedges and petunias those boys planted around the house. I don't mind forcing the two of you to fill in the holes you dug in our front yard. I don't mind forcing the two of you to re-dye the chocobos back to their natural color, or to clean up the egg yolks splattered across my porch. But if anyone of you gets hurt, I'm calling this thing to an end. I realize that the egg shells were mostly an accident. I don't care. You mute this down to acceptable levels, or I will involve myself. No arguments. Is that understood?"

Neither of them said anything, but they both nodded, heads a little lower. Rinoa reached down to smooth their hair out of their eyes, then took off down the stairs. She was late for work. Neither of them wanted to think about that.

Demyx sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I can deal with it when she gets angry. It's her being disappointed that I can't stand."

"We like her," Sora said. "It means we want her to be proud."

Demyx would have responded, but the door at the end of the hallway opened, and Cloud stepped out. He didn't glance at either of them. If he looked as if he were avoiding Demyx's gaze more than Sora's, there was nothing either of them wanted to say about that.

Neither had any idea what had happened the day Cloud came back from the Leonharts. Even Demyx only knew what had happened after. But Cloud had been strange since then. Angrier, maybe. Lost a lot in his head. More than likely, he was on his way to Zack's and Aerith's. He'd been doing that a lot, too.

Sora sighed again, walking down the stairs and to the kitchen. Rinoa's purse was already gone, so she was probably heading to the restaurant where she worked during the evening-one of her many part-time jobs. He grabbed his wallet and turned towards his older brother.

"I'm going to the mall with Donald and Goofy and the rest," he said. "Don't come back too late."

"You're not mom," Demyx said.

"Yeah," Sora agreed. "But that doesn't mean it's not what she would say. We've all done a crappy enough job with her lately. Let's not mess this up, too."

Demyx didn't answer. Sora opened up the door.

"Look," he said. "Have fun at Ars. That's all. Just have fun."

Demyx snorted, quiet. "No ' _don't do anything I wouldn't do?_ '"

Sora laughed. "If there's anything the last week's shown us, it's that you should definitely only do what I wouldn't do." He shrugged, and shot an awkward smile over his shoulder. "Just come back on time," he said, and then was out the door.

Olette, Selphie, and Kairi sprawled atop Kairi's bed, lazily watching some romance about artists, nude models, and pelvic creases. That is, they were trying to. Said movie-watching was a bit difficult when one Axel Tseng was pounding away at God-knows-what in the adjoining room.

Selphie groaned. "Why won't Axel just shut up? We're trying to watch one of the greatest romances of our time!"

Kairi sighed, folding her arms beneath her head. "He's building a cannon."

Olette sat up on the bed in shock. "A what?"

"Possibly I'm exaggerating," Kairi said. "But no doubt it's something to do with the prank war he and Riku have started with Sora and the boys."

Olette and Selphie turned to each other curiously, then peered at Kairi as if waiting for an answer. Kairi sighed again and closed her eyes, leaning back on her bed and waving a sock-clad foot daintily in the air.

"Axel loves Roxas. Roxas hates Axel. Axel has joined up with Riku in order to prank the Strife household. By doing so, Axel will get Roxas's attention, show that he has a sense of humor, prove himself Roxas's equal, and somehow attempt to seduce him. And that's why strange noises are coming from my brother's room. Got it memorized?"

Olette sat up again, staring at her friend. "You do realize that Axel's plan makes no sense," she said slowly. "Axel will get Roxas's negative attention, he'll prove he has a lousy sense of humor, and-if Roxas really hates him-there's no way he'll let Axel show him up."

"Tell that to my brother," Kairi said. "His plan sucks."

"His plan is brilliant!" Selphie said, clutching her pillow to her chest. She sighed dramatically and fell back onto the mattress, squealing. "It's, like, the star-crossed lovers who're torn apart by circumstances and hatred, and reunite at the end of the movie to live happily ever after! Don't you see? Axel will persevere, and in doing so will gain Roxas's respect, and we all know that respect is just two steps away from one true love."

Kairi and Olette both stared at her. They would have responded, but at that moment Axel walked by the open door of Kairi's room, carrying a guitar, a ladder, and a bag of pixie stix, all the while whistling the theme from _Jaws_.

The three friends turned to look at each other. And then they simultaneously dug into their purses.

"I've got thirty munny on Axel giving up in a month," Olette shouted, slamming three bills onto the bed.

"Twenty on them becoming friends, but nothing more," Kairi sighed.

Selphie grinned, and slapped her wager onto the mattress. "Fifty," she laughed, winking at her friends, "On them falling in love with each other by summer's end, whereupon they will maintain their relationship for their entire lives, and move in together when Roxas is done with high school."

Both other girls turned to look at each other and stifled their snorts of glee. They rolled their eyes towards Selphie and snorted. Sucker.

Sora, Donald, and Goofy had driven to the mall in order to buy a birthday gift for Daisy. That, at least, had been their intention. One hour later, Goofy had finally succeeded in tearing Sora and Donald from their DDR death match. Two hours later, Donald had finally managed to remove Sora and Goofy from their spot at the _Death by Chocolate Patisserie_ window before the manager forced a mop into their hands and demanded they wipe up the puddle of drool. Three hours later, Sora had at long last been able to detach Donald and Goofy from their mechanical, quarter-operated rides. It took another five minutes before Donald finally let go of the gummi ship, and even that was only accomplished by informing the short duck-impersonator exactly how long his death at Daisy's hands would last if he didn't buy her the awesomest present in the history of awesome presents before the day ended. They'd brought Minnie along, but she'd disappeared into Bath and Body works an hour ago, and Mickey had just sort of vanished somewhere along the lines. You could never quite tell with those two.

It was a very tired group of boys who finally stumbled out of a store wallpapered completely in pink, exited the building, plopped down onto a row benches, and examined their bags

"I never knew that shopping could be so hard," Sora sighed, sadly twirling the very last copy of the new Loveless CD between his fingers. He'd almost run over a small child in his rush to grab the thing, and was feeling very bad about the whole thing.

Goofy groaned. "Gawrsh. Penny's never been so tough to shop for."

Donald said nothing, but huffed angrily rolled over onto his belly. The poor boy had had the roughest time out of any of them. He'd already bought his soon-to-be-legal girlfriend a set of belts, perfumes, lotions, shoes, bows, and ice skates, but there was still something missing, dammit. He rolled his head to the side, blinking blearily across the street at a bright pink sign over a large greenhouse. Mar…Marluxia's…Florists.

Donald squealed and jumped straight up from the bench. Sora and Goofy both yelled and rolled off onto the ground, but Donald was already half-way across the street, dodging cars as he lugged six plastic bags behind him. By the time the two boys left behind realized what had happened, Donald had disappeared inside the flower shop.

Sora and Goofy raised simultaneous eyebrows at each other and followed at a slower pace, finally reaching the entrance and walking inside, the jingle of bells sounding through the room. Donald was waddling precariously towards them, his hands overflowing with bundles upon bundles of flowers.

"Dude," Sora whispered in awe. "You're buying all of those?!"

Donald glared at him. "It's Daisy's birthday," he squeaked angrily. "That's answer enough."

Sora laughed, holding his hands open to prevent Donald from tipping over with the weight of his packages and flowers, when Goofy suddenly cocked his head, turning towards one of the far aisles. "Sora?" the tall boy drawled curiously. "Doesn't that sound like Mickey?"

The brunet perked an ear, listening for the small boy's characteristic high-pitched voice. It wasn't long before he heard it.

"Gosh!" a tinny voice chirped cheerily, and the three boys grinned at each other in recognition. "Well, I'm sure it'll work out!"

A low voice answered him, but the words were too quiet to make out properly. The trio walked closer, and Mickey's loud laugh reverberated off the walls.

"Well, now," Mickey cried. "Just be patient! He's a good person, I'm sure he'll understand. Just explain yourself to him, and given enough time your patience will reap its rewards!"

"Who's Mickey talkin' to?" Goofy asked curiously. Sora shrugged in answer. This close, the voice was beginning to sound familiar, but he still couldn't quite…

"Thanks…" the unknown man said. "I'll…trying to show…really do like him."

So familiar…if only Sora could just…

"Well, gosh!" Mickey cried. He was in the next aisle, now. "Don't thank me, I just want to help! And anyway, word on the streets is that Selphie herself placed bets on a positive outcome for the two of you, so-"

Sora froze. Oh no. No. He knew who the voice belonged to.

"Guys," Sora whispered fervently. "We need to g-"

"Hey, Mickey!" Goofy cried, rounding the aisle and waving hello. The small boy turned to face them, a bright smile splitting his face wide.

"Sora! Donald! Goofy!" Mickey cried. "Where have you three been?"

Sora didn't answer. Because standing right behind Mickey, his eyes wide in shock, was Riku.

Sora spun around and began walking off, only to be stopped by a small hand wrapping around his wrist. He looked down at Mickey's wide smile. "Hiya, Sora! Have the two of you met before?"

Sora's eyes narrowed and he forced a wavering smile. "We're neighbors."

"Well, isn't that great!" Mickey cried. "Me and Riku over here met when we both reached for the same pair of flowers! I'd wanted to buy them for Minnie…" - here, Mickey's eyes turned misty and heart-shaped - "…but when Riku explained that he was buying them as an apology for someone he'd hurt, I figured 'Gosh, best let him have 'em!'"

Sora glowered at the floor. "Yeah, well…" he began awkwardly. "You and Axel do owe Roxas a pretty big apology, don't you? Mom spent two hours picking the egg shells from his back."

"I wasn't talking about Roxas," Riku answered gruffly. "I was talking about you."

There was silence in the greenhouse for a moment, before Riku sighed, letting his head rest in one tense hand. "Can I talk with you outside for a bit?"

Sora froze, and began to inch backwards. He took one look at the eerily happy look in Mickey's eyes and slid to a halt, slumped over in surrender. "Lead the way," he muttered.

Riku turned, waved a goodbye at Mickey, and did just that.

Cloud sat on the largest living room couch, wallowing in angst. He could hear the knocks on the front door, echoing loudly across his house, and burrowed deeper into the cushions in response.

It was Sephiroth. Cloud knew that, because he'd been coming over every day at five, and the only reason the wall of killer petunias that the Leonhart's had planted a few days ago had been destroyed was because Sephiroth had cut a path to the front door so that he could ring the doorbell and knock.

Cloud had been lucky so far-almost everyone else was gone, pranking the neighbors or buying birthday presents for friends or working the late shift at restaurants, so there had been no one around to catch a glimpse of the CEO of Jenova BioTech standing quiet and patient on his doorstep, that same ever-present smile curling his lips up. As if he was pleased with the way things were turning. As if he was perfectly secure in the knowledge that one day Cloud would seek him out. It was just him, watching Sephiroth's outline through the curtains, alone in the living room with Roxas asleep on the second floor.

Sephiroth left five minutes later. Cloud told himself that the feeling that swept through him then was relief.

He wanted to leave. Anywhere. Back to Nibelheim or Midgar. Anywhere. Anywhere where Sephiroth would be nothing more than a memory, a wisp of thought to be smothered and filed back into the shoebox in his closet, where he kept letters and notes and everything else he pawed through every few months, when he hated himself worse than usual and couldn't bring himself to stop. He didn't know how Demyx had found it. Didn't care. But Sephiroth had always refused to be just a memory, and know that he knew that Cloud was alive and well and trying to get the fuck over this, he'd never go away. He wouldn't forget. Sephiroth would never let him run away.

He bowed his head, angry tears involuntarily forcing themselves into his eyes. He'd run away once. His friends had followed him. He could not…he would not…ask them to uproot their lives again.

Cloud had loved him once. He couldn't allow this to last.

The doorbell rang, and Cloud jerked, turning to stare at the door, mouth open to take several frightened, panting breaths. Sephiroth…

Fuck. In the end, it was always Sephiroth. He closed his eyes. He wouldn't run. He would not run.

Cloud clenched his fists, walked forward, and swung the door open.

"Hello, Cloud," Leon said. "Can I come in?"

Cloud stepped back in shock. Leon took the opportunity to step past him and into the house. When Cloud didn't follow, Leon paused in his steps. "Are you okay?"

Cloud watched him. He blinked.

"Come in," he said numbly, before he could tell himself not to. "Sit. I'll get you something to drink."

He sat there, while Cloud disappeared into the kitchen, pouring water mechanically into a cup. He didn't slosh it. Good. He hadn't yet lost so much control of himself for that. He returned and handed it to Leon in silence, eyeing the place where Leon had taken a seat. "All right," Cloud said. "What did you need?"

Leon waited so long to respond that Cloud was momentarily sure that he hadn't heard the question. But Leon's eyes were fixed on him; there was no way he'd missed what Cloud had said. Finally, Leon opened his mouth, "I wanted to apologize."

Cloud tried to find any possible way that Leon wasn't referring to what happened with Sephiroth in his house. He couldn't think of one. "It wasn't your fault."

"It was my house," Leon said. "No matter what anyone had said. I shouldn't have let him in."

"Yes, well," Cloud said. "I knocked myself out. That didn't give you much choice." His hands had gone stiff. He loosened them. He didn't want Leon to look. "It was gonna happen sooner or later. You can't run from someone like him forever. Better it happened when I had the two of you for emotional support, right. Wouldn't have liked to run into him all on my own."

Leon watched him. Then he said, "what did he do?"

Cloud hadn't been looking at him when Leon asked the question. He didn't turn to look at him now. But his mouth felt oddly frozen, and his voice, when he spoke, was quite low.

"Aerith doesn't know," he said. Quiet, quiet, low. "Zack doesn't know. Tifa, Yuffie, my family, my friends. None of them know. I don't think that's something you should ask, then. It's rude. ."

"It is rude," Leon said. "And it's none of my business. But all I know about you I learned years ago, when I was still too young to get it. That means I'm not exactly going to judge."

Cloud didn't answer.

"You were together," Leon said. "Weren't you."

Cloud didn't answer. But the line of his back went a little straighter. That was answer enough.

Leon walked toward. Cloud didn't move. Leon didn't know whether it was because he didn't want to, or because he thought that moving would be a tell. The distinction mattered. But he had a point, and he needed to make it.

He dropped to his knees before him. Cloud watched him. Leon couldn't quite read the emotion in his eyes.

"Are you propositioning me?" Cloud asked.

Leon watched him, quietly. He didn't respond to the joke.

"I'd try to make you happy, you know," he said. I don't know if I'd be able to, or if you'd let me. But I'd try."

Cloud's face was carved from marble. "That's kind."

"Not really," Leon said. "But it's the best I can do."

Cloud's eyes had not shifted from his since Leon had knelt before him, and they didn't shift now. Leon was pretty sure that the only reason for that was that Cloud was proud, and he'd learned a long time ago that showing weakness would not make anyone stop bothering you. But at least it meant that he was looking into Leon's eyes when Leon said that. It meant that he could at least tell that Leon was telling the truth.

"Tell me why," he said.

There were several things Cloud could be referring to. There were.

"You were kind to me once," Leon said. "On a day when I really needed someone to be kind. Every time I saw you after that, I remembered. I fell in love. Sorry. That's all it was."

Quiet. Cloud didn't say a word.

Then he did. He looked away and did. "He didn't do anything wrong," he said. "I'm sorry for the way I acted. It was as much my fault as his. He didn't do anything wrong."

"I don't think I believe that," Leon said.

"You don't have to believe it," Cloud said. "We both made mistakes. The only difference was that I couldn't deal with it anymore. I just wanted you to know. He didn't do anything wrong."

Leon stared at him a moment, silent. Then, slowly, he leaned forward.

He didn't kiss him. Didn't know if, right now, at this moment, with Cloud so lost inside himself and Cloud so still, he truly wanted to. But he leaned close enough to rest their heads together. Leaned close enough that he could feel Cloud breathe.

Then he stood, and made his way out.

Before he left, he heard Cloud say, "If there's one thing I do have to say about you, it's that you make me wish." But there was no way he could really respond to that, so he only kept his head down and walked out the door.

Loud rock music ripped through speakers littered all over the large SidneyPark stadium. A heaving, twining mass of people pressed against each other, some dancing, some jumping, everyone screaming a mad jumble of lyrics as Vaan crooned song after song into the microphone, his voice harmonizing almost sweetly with the crash of drums and the twang of guitars.

Zexion stood in the fifth row. Beside him, Demyx sung Vaan's lyrics right back at him, a hand thrust into the air. He was shouting more than trying to hold a melody, and his voice was wild with exultation, but he had a nice voice. Zexion wouldn't have expected it.

"You're good," he said, quietly enough compared to the din around him that when Demyx turned, grinning wide and bright, Zexion didn't know how he'd possibly heard.

"I play sometimes at 10 of Spades," Demyx said, laughing. "Y'know, that casino in Hollow Bastion? Me and Sora and another one of my friends." A smirk tilted his lips up, and he laughed again. "Of course, Mom and Cloud and Roxas don't know, or they'd kill us, but I met the owner a while ago and he offered us a gig there once a month." He grinned. "You can come watch us one day, if you want."

Zexion had no chance to answer, as at that moment Fran began pounding a quick half-beat on her drum set and Balthier burst into a quick guitar riff, and the entire stadium, Demyx included, erupted in screams.

Zexion liked Ars. That is to say, he liked them as much as he liked any kind of music, which wasn't much, but he would have gone anyway, even if Demyx hadn't wanted to. With friends, maybe. With Riku. Or alone, because sometimes there was comfort in that, in being entirely anonymous in a mass of people and being able to do whatever he wanted secure in the knowledge that he'd never see any of them again. He would have preferred the last one, probably. This was the sort of thing he probably would have enjoyed more alone.

Beside him, Demyx danced and laughed and looked like he'd never cared about anything in his life. Zexion wondered what that meant.

"I'm going to grab some water," he said (or shouted, because let's face it, no one was gonna be able to hear him over Ars if he didn't shout). "I'll be back."

Demyx grinned at him, bright and thoughtless. Zexion wondered what that meant, too.

He made his way out of the stadium and into one of the dim hallways that surrounded the ampitheater. People wandered around, looking for bathrooms or water or merchandise. He ignored them, slid inside a restroom, walked into the farthest stall, and breathed.

There were drums pounding in the distance, like a second heartbeat. His own heart was beating a frantic tattoo against his ribs. If he'd come here alone, he'd be able to leave now. He wouldn't have had to worry about dealing with people. He could have done whatever he wanted.

 _There were issues with thinking like that,_ he told himself.

 _Yes,_ he answered. _I know._

He leaned back against the stall wall, idly shushing the neat freak voice that started complaining every time he stepped inside a public restroom. He tipped his head back, counted to ten.

Someone knocked on the stall door.

"Sorry," he said automatically. "It's taken."

"I know," Demyx said, on the other side of the door. "Open up."

Zexion's hand was on the handle before he quite realized it. Demyx stood there, a strange expression on his face, half amused and half something Zexion couldn't exactly read. "I could have been busy."

"Figured the odds were 50/50," Demyx said. "You gonna let me in?"

"I'm in a restroom," Zexion said, which, on a scale of one to really self-evident responses weighed in around 'that's a dog.' "There's not exactly a good deal of room."

"Room enough," Demyx said. "Let me in."

Zexion stepped back. That was invitation enough.

Demyx closed the door behind him, sidling past Zexion to lower the toilet seat and plop himself down upon it, apparently heedless of the billions of germs that were now probably impregnated on his clothes for life. Zexion leaned back against the door, partly for claustrophobia, mostly because he didn't really have anywhere else to go.

"They're not done," he said.

"Yeah," Demyx said.

"If my guess is anywhere near right," Zexion continued, "the concert still has another hour or so to go."

"Yeah."

"So I suppose what I'm asking," Zexion finished, "is why you're here, sharing a small, very dirty, very public restroom stall with me, when Ars Arcanum is busy causing premature deafness not one hundred meters away."

Demyx shrugged. Zexion could still not read the expression on his face.

"You looked flushed," Demyx said. "I figured you needed me more than they did."

Zexion paused. "I'm not having sex with you in a restroom stall."

Demyx squawked. "I wasn't going to ask you to!"

"Really," Zexion said. "Because there aren't many other reasons I can come up with for us being here. And not out there. Where the stench of urine is a little less pervasive."

"I was trying to be romantic," Demyx said. "Close quarters are romantic."

"If you look to your right, you will see a glory hole."

"You're the worst," Demyx said.

"I know," Zexion said. "I've been told."

Demyx looked at him, lips pulled strangely up. He didn't answer.

There were things he would let himself think of. This wasn't one of them.

"Come on," he said, and turned around. "Let's go."

Demyx stood, reached up, and held the door closed.

Zexion didn't move for a moment, eyes fixed almost languidly on the place where Demyx's hand had fallen on the door. Demyx came up behind him. His palms shifted to hover over Zexion's arms.

"No," Demyx said. "Wait. Just give me a minute. Don't go."

Zexion didn't turn around. When he spoke, his voice sounded distant and somewhat flat. "If I truly want to leave, you will not stop me."

Demyx jerked. "Yes," he said, breathless. "I mean, no. Of course I wouldn't."

Zexion didn't leave. Demyx stood there, a hand still pressed to the door, not exactly hemming Zexion in, but coming close enough that the stall felt claustrophobic. Distantly, he could hear people milling around outside; more distantly, he could hear the noise of the band playing loudly enough to drown out his thoughts.

Demyx shifted behind him. The breath he took shook. "Do you want to go home?"

"Not particularly," Zexion said.

"You do," Demyx said. "You're not enjoying yourself."

Zexion shrugged, finally turning back around. Demyx was close enough that Zexion could see the striatons in his eyes; the proximity made the tips of his fingers want to squirm. "I don't understand music the way most people do," he said. "So perhaps I'm not enjoying myself the way you are. But I had planned to come before you arrived, and I would have come even if you had said no."

"So it's me," Demyx said.

Zexion thought about how to answer that in a way that wouldn't sound horribly cruel. "Only tangentially," he said instead. "And there's not much reason to get upset about it now. So if you're quite done, I suggest we-"

Demyx leaned in, arms coming up on either side of him. His face had fallen back into the strange expression Zexion had seen him wear days ago, on the cliffs, when he'd come back from Lexaeus looking as if the floor had shifted beneath him; not enough to throw him off balance, hardly enough to notice, but confusing, like nagging at the back of his thoughts, or like he was listening for something terribly important that he could barely hear.

"Kiss me," Demyx said.

Zexion watched him, felt something in his chest go tight. "I'm not having sex with you in a restroom stall."

"I'm not asking you to," Demyx said. "I just want you to kiss me."

Zexion didn't move, for a long, long time. And then, in the instant before Demyx stepped back, he pushed off from against the door, wrapped a hand tight in Demyx's hair, and kissed him.

Demyx's heart felt very fast against Zexion's chest.

In the distance, Tidus Highwind sang loud.

Sora followed Riku out of the greenhouse and into the small rear parking lot. The place was all-but empty; no doubt everyone else was at the SidneyPark watching Ars break attendance records.

When they'd made it past the parked cars and onto the small field of grass beyond it, Riku spun around, catching Sora unawares. "I want to apologize," he said, his hands shoved in his pockets. "I…I barely remember how this whole thing started-"

"You fell on me," Sora said, somewhat matter-of-factly.

"-But I'm tired of it," Riku continued. "I mean, sure. Maybe I almost enjoy it. Waiting to see what you and Roxas have come up with. Planning something better."

"Attempting to plan something better," Sora corrected.

Riku sighed. "Would you please just listen?. I'm not gonna lie. It's exciting. I like it. This is fun. If I don't think about why we're doing this, or how much your brother wants to see me die, I can have fun. But I hate…I hate knowing that you hate me. I hate not being able to tell whether I want to hit you or kiss you every time you look at me. But above that, I hate knowing that I'll never-"

"Riku."

"-Ever-"

"Stop it."

"-be with you."

Sora froze, and Riku shook him by the shoulders lightly. "I hate it," he said, leaning forward until Sora's bright blue eyes were his entire world. "Because I like you. I really, really like you. Roxas was wrong about a lot of things, but he was right about this. This is all really irritating, but from the very beginning…from the very beginning, I liked you."

"Riku," Sora whispered, closing his eyes. "Stop it and let me go."

The taller boy stepped back as if shocked, holding his hands up before him in a gesture of submission. Sora stepped back, straightening his shirt.

"I'm sorry, Riku," Sora said quietly. "But I can't."

Riku flexed his hands in his pockets, his eyes layered and averted. "Why?"

Sora shrugged, staring at the patterns in the asphalt. "I don't know if I like guys," he said. "I don't think I have before, but I'm still figuring myself out, and I don't really care either way, because love is love and I'm not gonna stress over it. But I'm not Demyx. I don't want to throw myself pell-mell into relationships on the off chance that they might work. I wouldn't do it normally. I won't do it now. It's not fair to either of us. I don't like it. It's not me."

Riku said nothing, his voice caught in his throat. Sora stared at him for one long, long moment. His eyes were bluer than Riku could every imagine seeing them.

He wanted to speak. He wanted to speak so badly. To say _yes. No. I don't know, but please let me find out. Please. I'll suffer Roxas, I'll suffer Axel. Just please, let me find out what it is I feel about you._

 _You take my breath away._

 _You make me furious. You make me happy._

 _I just might-_

He wanted to speak, and did not know the words.

Sora lowered his eyes finally, and continued. "And what with Roxas, I'm not even sure if we can be friends. He's still pissed at you and Axel, and it'll take a while and a whole lot of something for him to forgive you two." He laughed, but the sound wasn't happy.

"I'm sorry, Riku, but Roxas is my brother. I'll always follow him." He took a long, shuddering breath, and let his hands open and close before him in nervous rhythm.

"I can't choose you. Not over him. Not when you don't love me. It's not fair."

Sora walked away then, and Riku couldn't find the words to stop him. But in that moment, the pain in his chest blossomed into something near unbearable, and he'd never been so sure of what the feeling was.

Axel took a deep breath and propped his large, wooden ladder alongside the Strife's eastward-facing wall. He bit his lip, moving the ladder so that it lay directly to the right of Roxas's window. He was gonna succeed, dammit. Hate or no hate, everyone loved being serenaded on a moonlit night by a handsome man standing outside of their bedroom window. He'd spent the last three days learning how to play a guitar. It was fool proof.

Finally satisfied with the ladder's position, he emptied five pixie stix into his mouth at once. For comfort's sake. He took a deep breath, slung the guitar's strap over his shoulder, and began climbing. And he climbed, and he climbed, and he climbed. Fifteen feet of the ground, he sat down carefully on the seat at the ladder's apex, made sure he was balanced, and moved the guitar until it was lying on his lap. He closed his eyes, strummed a few practice notes, and then burst into song.

"When the moon hits your eyes like a big pizza pie-"

The window flung open, and Roxas stood there, his eyes wide and his mouth agape. "What are you doing?" he hissed. Axel grinned at him, winking once, and continued.

"That's amore!"

"You're gonna wake up the neighbors!" Roxas growled, leaning his head out of the window. Axel temporarily debated kissing him, then decided against it. He would show Roxas that he was determined.

"When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine-"

Roxas cocked his head to the side slightly. He leaned forward, his face a hair's breath away from Axel's own. His eyelids drooped until only the gleaming slits of blue were visible, and he finally spoke, the words breezing across Axel's parted lips.

"I thought I told you to shut up," he whispered, and shoved Axel off the ladder.

Three doors down, Auron shot up from his sleep, the last echoes of 'That's amoreeeeee!' shrieking through the still night sky.


	16. Chapter 14: Uh Oh

**Chapter Fourteen: Uh Oh…**

Current Betting Pool: Strife - 3612 munny Leonhart - 3596 munny

There is, in this vast universe of ours, a law we affectionately call the Looney Toon Clause. The Looney Toon Clause states something to this effect: it does not matter how many anvils are dropped on your head, how many cliffs you fall off of, how many times you are run over or smushed by alien spaceships or strapped to explosive devices: you will always survive, and will always be back for the next episode.

This clause, of course, does not exist in the real world. Axel was just really, really lucky.

"Honestly," Kairi said, delicately placing a band-aid on one of the many battle wounds Axel was bearing. "You should be grateful you're still alive after falling off that ladder. If Sora and Roxas hadn't overlooked that one patch of killer petunias, you could very well have landed on the ground and broken every bone in your body."

"Grateful," Axel barked angrily as Olette wrapped his entire left arm in a bandage. "Those things almost bit my leg off!"

"Oh, hush now, Axel," Selphie said from her spot on the bed where she was watching the proceedings with great amusement. "Who'd want to eat that."

"You shut up," Axel hissed, yelping as Olette rewarded his outburst with a particularly harsh pull of the bandages. "You're not even helping them patch me up."

"Call it tough love," Selphie said. "You need to learn what works with Roxas, and what doesn't. It'll save the two of you a lot of pain when you finally start going out."

Axel's eyes went a little heart-shaped.

"Wait. You…seriously think I can do it?" he asked, leaning forward eagerly. "You believe in me?"

"Of course, dear," Selphie said sweetly, patting the red spikes of hair. "Just like I believe in Zexion and Larxene and Z-"

The door slammed open, and Riku Leonhart trudged in, falling onto Axel's bed and burying his face in the pillow.

"He said no," Riku muttered, tangling a hand in his hair and tugging at it. "I told him, and he said no."

Selphie bit her lip. "Ah. Well, I believe in you, too."

Riku didn't even bother to question her, and just groaned. Kairi left her brother's side and plopped down before her friend. "What happened?"

The boy released another moan and shook his head. "I asked him out," he muttered, voice garbled by the pillow. "Told him I liked him. I do. I really do. And he said no."

"Poor baby," Olette said, at least fifty percent sincerely.

"At least your love interest didn't push you off a ladder," Axel muttered. "I won't be able to sit straight for a week."

From her corner, Selphie sighed disdainfully, crossing her legs. "Oh, please," she moaned. "Are you two idiots gonna give up already?"

"There's nothing to give up," Riku said. "We were never with them."

The pretty brunette rolled her eyes. "And you never will be if you're gonna throw in the towel now."

"I don't know," Kairi said thoughtfully. "It gets pretty annoying when you tell a guy no and he still keeps dogging you."

"Creepy," Olette said. "The word that comes to mind is _creepy_."

"Our coup shall be neither annoying nor creepy," Selphie cried. "It will be a healthy, considerate attempt to win the hands of their soulmates while paying attention to their feelings and comfort and making sure that no one is pressuring anyone else. Are you gonna let a few pitfalls stop you?"

Axel frowned and hunched over slightly. "No," he grumbled.

"Are you going to forfeit your opportunity to spend the rest of your life with your one true loves because you've let a few misunderstandings and near-death experiences get in your way?"

Axel and Riku furrowed their eyebrows and snarled. "No!"

"Then the solution to this problem is simple," Selphie said. "The two of you have to figure out how, exactly, you are going to win their affection."

"Would be a lot easier to win their affection if we even had their friendship," Axel said. "As it is they sort of start hurling curses at us on sight."

"Then let's start there," Selphie said. "How do you propose gaining their friendship?"

Riku narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "Extortion? Staged kidnappings? Movies?"

"Movies," Kairi said. "I vote movies."

"So we pick one he likes," Riku said. "Something classy. Like _War of the Worlds_."

"It was based on a book," Axel informed the girls wisely. "So it's definitely classy."

"And then we ask him to come watch it with us, and when he sees which one we picked he'll think we're all dignified and sophisticated and shit."

"And then in the middle of the movie," Axel finished, "you can invite Roxas to come sit with us, and then he'll be like, ' _Oh, they're so much nicer than I thought they were! Oh, Axel, I'm so sorry for all the pain I've caused you, you rugged devil of a man! Take me!_ ""

"Awesome," Riku crowed, holding his hand out for Axel to slap.

A muscle in Selphie's jaw started working furiously, and a strange whining noise erupted from her throat.

"You okay, Selphie?" Riku asked curiously. "You look weird."

"What," Axel said, cocking his head to the side. "You don't think we should rent _Fight Club_ instead, do you?"

Olette glanced at Kairi and hid a grin. And _this_ was their cue to leave.

"Sorry, guys," Kairi said, as she and Olette simultaneously stood. "But Olette and I are gonna go to the mall."

"We just made fifty munny," the girl in question giggled, grabbing onto the redhead's arm. "You don't wanna come, do you, Selphie?"

Selphie forced a grin and shook her head. "No, you two go on ahead," she said brightly, mouth stretching so wide it looked more like a grimace. "I wanna talk to the boys a bit longer."

Olette and Kairi hid triumphant grins beneath sweet smiles, and disappeared out the door.

As soon as the bedroom door swung shut, Riku raised an eyebrow. "What was that about?" he asked curiously. Selphie shook her head swiftly and held up a finger, shushing him. The trio waited in silence for a few seconds before the sound of the front door opening and closing drifted up the stairs.

Selphie released a huge sigh of relief. "Finally," she groaned. "I _so_ didn't need them here acting all high and mighty about everything." Riku and Axel shot confused glances at each other, then opened their mouths to speak.

Selphie interrupted them before they'd managed to get a single syllable out.

"Listen up," she barked. "Your plan sucks!"

The two boys jumped.

"Renting movies?" she sneered, waving a delicately manicured hand in the air disdainfully. "Serenades? Phsaw. You two are gosh darn lightweights."

"I resent that!" Axel cried indignantly. "I shelled out a hundred munny for that ukulele!"

Riku blinked. "I thought it was a guitar."

Axel turned curiously red. "Right. That's what I said."

"Anyway," Selphie continued. "The point is, you two are going about this completely the wrong way. Look. What's the biggest obstacle in your quest to secure the hearts of Messieurs Sora and Roxas Strife?"

Riku and Axel glanced at each other, then nodded definitively. "Roxas."

"Good job," Selphie nodded. "Roxas refuses to speak with either of you, and Sora refuses to go against his own flesh and blood for two dumbasses he barely knows. So without Roxas the two of you are totally screwed."

"We know that," Riku muttered irritably. "But we've tried smooth-talking Roxas. Remember the café? And what do you think Axel's little singing gig last night was all about?"

"No!" Selphie cried, popping each of the boys upside the head with a small fist. "No! Wrong, you dorks, you're going about this all wrong! Listen," she said, sighing and curling her hands behind her neck. "The most important thing in any relationship is trust. Now, how are you gonna get Roxas's trust?"

"I wish you'd just give us the answer, instead of making us guess," Riku grumbled, leaning back on the bed. "You're being very irritating."

Selphie's mouth dropped in outrage, and Axel immediately held his hands out in an effort to placate her. "He didn't mean that," he drawled, shooting the white-haired boy a nasty look. "And the answer is Sora, isn't it? That's how we're supposed to get Roxas's trust. Through Sora."

The brunette grinned. "Bingo."

"But how?" Axel asked, rolling over onto his stomach. "Okay, I get that the key to everything is Sora. But there's no way in hell-"

"Lexaeus," Riku suddenly said. Both brunette and redhead turned to stare at him in surprise.

"Do you have a plan?" Selphie asked.

Riku answered with a ferocious grin.

"Oh, fuck yeah. I've got a plan."

Cloud, for the first time in what seemed life forever (but was probably only a day or two), stepped out of his room. His stomach was shrieking for any type of food that wasn't ramen or chips, but he ignored it. If he stopped at the kitchen now, he'd never go outside; he'd just sit there with his tub of Ben & Jerry's and stare out the window like a fucking hermit, jumping at every little noise. So he walked out of his room, bypassed the kitchen, and stopped at the front door.

He could do this. He could. He just had to turn the doorknob and step outside. Easy as fucking pie.

Cloud stood there for ten minutes before he finally managed to open the door, hands trembling. It would be funny if he wasn't so sad.

The sad thing was that if he'd had his way, he'd have remained locked in his room for at least another year. Maybe two. But nope. The world had an economy. People needed to get paid, and he'd received a delivery request not half an hour ago. Which is exactly why he was exiting the house at eleven at night, ready to pick up a-probably illegal-shipment of who-knew-what for some dojo in Hollow Bastion. Hollow Bastion. They expected him to drive to Hollow Bastion. Did they know who lived in Hollow Bastion? Not Cloud, that was for sure!

He didn't want to think about who wanted to pick up a large bulk shipment after midnight. Wasn't his business. Well, actually it was, but that didn't mean Cloud needed to get involved in it. He just shipped 'em and collected his payment, no questions asked.

Inanely, the thought that this was some scheme concocted by Sephiroth in order to corner him alone passed his mind, but he quickly dismissed it. He wasn't listed in the phone book. It would be simple enough to track Cloud down using the business number for Strife's Delivery Service, but…

Sephiroth wouldn't, would he? He wouldn't…he was too arrogant, too sure that Cloud would come to him. He wouldn't…

He might.

Cloud made a small, hoarse sound deep in his throat and placed his forehead against the warm brown paneling of the front door. He needed to take this job, he had to. Rinoa was getting tired, and it had been a month since Cloud had bullied her into quitting one of the three plus jobs she was currently juggling. He needed to pick up the slack.

 _Please don't let it be him_ , he thought to himself, clenching his eyes shut tightly. _Please. Give me some more time._

Cloud took a deep breath and opened the door.

The drive to Hollow Bastion took half an hour, and it was another fifteen minutes before he reached the large warehouse where the dojo's shipment was being stored. Thirty minutes to cart the boxes into his truck, and then a ten minute drive to the outskirts of Hollow Bastion.

He pulled up into the surprisingly large shop, double-checking the address. The place was named _Balamb Garden_ , but the caller had called it a dojo. And all the lights were off. The place didn't even seem like it was open.

He parked his truck and took a deep breath, bowing his head to the steering wheel. He could do this. It didn't matter if it was Sephiroth. It didn't matter. He'd dump the boxes and grab the money and go.

He was just about to do that when a hand tapped on the driver's side window of his car. Cloud jerked in almost-terror. He turned towards the window. And then felt his mouth drop open in shock.

"You?" he asked in confusion. "What are you doing here?"

Leon raised an eyebrow and motioned for the blond to lower his window. "I work here."

Cloud blinked. "You work?"

"Surprise," Leon said, stepping to the side so Cloud could exit the car. "The boss gave me time off so we could move and settle in. But I've been back at work for a while, and that shipment has been lying in the warehouse for the last week. I haven't been able to pick it up until now, what with all the…" A slight eyebrow twitch. "Excitement."

"You mean the painting and the plucking and the growing of sentient petunias?" Cloud muttered. Leon stared back at him, then shrugged.

"There's that, too," he answered, but made no effort to continue.

The blond sighed and walked around to the large bed of his truck to grab a large box. "And I suppose you just happened to pick my delivery service at random from the yellow pages."

Leon paused for a moment, then walked forward and grabbed an identical box, carrying it to the door. "No," he said calmly. "I could have picked it up myself. But the boss gave me an allowance for shipping and transportation, just in case, and I didn't want to put the effort into carting the boxes up alone. Tifa told me you ran a service a few days ago. So I called you. Now come on," he said, switching on the lights. "We're taking these to the back."

Leon led him through the large building, past rooms full of weapons and bags and mats. "What is this place?" Cloud asked suddenly, trying to dispel the strange, awkward pins and needles running up his back. "I thought it was a dojo, but we just passed an archery range."

Leon glanced at him. "It's like a dojo, I guess. That's the name we use, anyway. But it's more than martial arts. They teach judo in 3A, and karate in 4B, but you also have the shooting range in 6 A through C, the archery range over on the west side, and fencing in the rear."

Cloud's eyes narrowed in interest. "Fencing?"

Leon nodded. "Among other things. We're eclectic."

"Do you know how to?"

"I can't fence," Leon said. Then he shrugged. "But I am head instructor for kendo."

Cloud told himself to stay quiet. He still opened his mouth.

"I used to take sword lessons," Cloud said, voice carefully flat. "Fencing mostly, because that was all you could really get in a town like Nibelheim. Me and…" He paused. Swallowed. Forced his pulse slow. "We used to play at sword fighting. When I was a kid. Ten, I guess. We'd spar sometimes. He…" He inhaled, a deep, shuddering breath that hurt to hear. "They'd always win, of course. They were bigger than me. A lot older than me. But I'd try and try and we'd…we'd have fun. We had fun."

Leon stared at him for a minute. "What happened?"

"What always happens," Cloud said. "I decided I would be happier if I went away."

Leon looked as if he wasn't exactly sure what to say to that. Cloud didn't care. He straightened, rolled his shoulders, and said, "I want to spar."

Leon frowned. "What?"

"I said I wanted to spar," Cloud repeated. "I haven't seriously fought anyone since I was a kid. I've barely picked up a sword since then. I miss it. I want to fight."

"No," Leon frowned, shaking his head. "They're swords. You could get seriously hurt."

"I'm not an idiot," Cloud said, voice oddly absent. "I know where my limits are. And I'm good."

Leon hesitated, then withdrew a pair of keys from his back pocket, padding over to the huge adjoining storage room . "Just for fun," he said, working the key into the lock. "Nothing serious."

"Of course," Cloud murmured offhandedly, and the tone somehow ground under Leon's skin so badly he almost broke the lock he was holding.

"Pick one," he muttered, waving a hand at the rear wall, but Cloud was already walking forward, pointing to a huge blade hanging six feet off the ground.

"That one," the blond said firmly. "That's the one I want."

Leon frowned. "That's the Buster sword. It weighs as much as you do. It's not something you can exactly-"

Cloud reached up and removed it from the wall.

The brunet blinked. "This, I think," he said blankly, "Is the part where Riku would say 'WTF.' I'm not Riku, so I'll just ask how the hell you managed to do that with one hand."

For the first time in a very long time, Cloud allowed himself a smirk. "I told you," he sighed, swinging the sword over his shoulder and tilting his head up in absolute confidence. "I was good. I'd have to be a huge jackass to call myself that if I couldn't even pick up a sword."

"That's the _Buster_ sword," Leon repeated. "Even I can't pick that thing up one-handed."

The smirk widened. "Well," Cloud said. "You must not be very tough, then, huh?"

Leon blinked once, twice. And then an answering smirk spread across his lips in challenge. "Just for that," he said, "I'm gonna put you on your back."

The grin twitched. "Was that a proposition?"

"It was a threat," Leon said. "You gonna go home and cry into your pillow while you eat Ben & Jerry's?"

Cloud laughed, and swung the sword at Leon's face.

Leon's blade was there to meet it.

Simultaneous grins spread on their faces.

Cloud swung downward and Leon danced to the left, letting his gunblade soar horizontally, crashing into steel and sliding off. They spun around each other, one advancing and the other retreating, their positions reversing with every failed attack.

"You haven't done this in how long?" Leon grit through clenched teeth, swinging his dull blade upward to shield a downward blow. Cloud grinned.

"A few months."

"I thought you'd said years!"

A smirk. "I lied. People do that sometimes."

"Bastard," Leon growled, shoving forward and catching the blond off-balance for a minute. He pushed him backward, five strides, ten, working away at Cloud's hastily crumbling defenses. "Sorry, Cloud," he half-gasped from lack of breath. "But you're still a few years away from being able to beat-"

Cloud sent his huge blade in a horizontal sweep, knocked Leon's out of his hand, and shoved him against the wall. He raised the very sharp sword tip to the brunet's neck, bare centimeters separating them.

"…me," Leon finished, voice surprised. Cloud grinned, though the expression seemed less mischievous and more…

"I think this is the point where I'm supposed to say that I'm not really right-handed," Leon muttered. "But that would be a bluff."

"Sorry, Leonhart," Cloud said, and if his voice sounded odd and wobbly to his own ears it didn't matter. "But I just kicked your ass."

Leon nodded mutely, suddenly realizing how very close they were. He could feel Cloud's breath on his cheek.

"You should probably back away," Leon breathed, his eyes never leaving those lips.

"Yeah," Cloud said, but he didn't move.

"No, really," Leon said. "You should…you should go."

"Yeah," Cloud repeated, just as softly.

Leon's eyes flickered up to stare at Cloud's. They looked molten. They looked very blue.

Leon leaned forward, the blade of the broad sword pressing into his neck. Not yet close enough to cut.

"I don't know," Cloud whispered, the words traveling across the millimeters separating them. Leon hesitated for the barest moment, and then leaned forward anyway.

A thin line of red erupted on the brunet's neck. Their lips met.

The sword clattered to the ground.

Immediately their mouths were open, pressing hard against each other, tongues meeting and tangling. Cloud bit back a moan, automatically compensating for the involuntary sound by shoving against Leon, pinning him against the wall and opening his mouth wider for the hungry tongue forcing entrance. Leon forced his head backward, gasping for air. "Off," he growled, grabbing onto the hem of Cloud's turtleneck and pulling it up. Cloud nodded, lifting his arms to help with the removal, then set to work on Leon's buttons, half-wrenching them out of their holes and shoving the shirt down Leon's shoulders. Leon's mouth left Cloud's and attached itself to his throat, sucking so hard that Cloud's head fell back before he could stop it.

"Fuck,"Cloud whispered. "More."

Leon shoved him backward, following simultaneously, dragging him down to the floor and kicking the blades away. He loomed over Cloud, hands traveling across his chest, feathering across a clavicle, going down down down until they slipped under jeans and boxers and squeezed. Cloud bucked into it, brain going hot and heady. He was so lost in the feel of it that he didn't realize that Leon was talking until he realized that lips were moving against his ear, and caught the tail end of "-me."

"What," Cloud groaned.

"I said," Leon said, mouthing at the place where Cloud's neck met his jaw. "Tell me you like me."

Cloud came to a stop. He gaped up at him for a long moment, feeling a bit like someone had just dumped cold water over his head. Then, with a rush of red-hot humiliation, he dropped himself back to the ground and said, "Get off."

"What?"

"I said," Cloud said, as calmly as he could under the circumstances, which was not at all, "get off."

Leon stopped. He backed off. He stared at Cloud as if someone had just punched him. And then he said, "Tell me what I did wrong."

Cloud was standing, trying to straighten out his clothes. "Nothing," he said, keeping his voice as level as it would go. He redid his zipper, fixed the collar of his shirt. "I just misunderstood."

"I don't see what you could possibly misunderstand," Leon said. "I thought...thought everything felt fine."

"It did," Cloud said. "It was only that I was operating under the assumption that you understood the only thing I really wanted from you was a fuck, and it felt pretty bad to realize you would only sleep with me if I decided that I'd suddenly fallen in love with you, too."

Leon stared at him.

"You're upset," he said, slow, "because I wish you'd love me."

"I'm upset because you ruined a perfectly good round of sex by demanding I love you," Cloud said.

"I didn't demand-"

"Asking me to declare undying devotion in the middle of sex comes pretty close."

"That's not what I asked for," Leon said. "You were kissing me. I didn't know that liking me was that large a gap."

"Don't be facetious."

"I'm not. It's the truth."

"It's not the truth," Cloud said. "You're upset because you saw me once however many years ago and you built me up to be someone in your head that I am very clearly not, and now that you've finally gotten to know me you realize that I'm not going to love you! I'll have sex with you, but I'm not going to love you, I don't really want to love you, and I'm not so desperate to sleep with you that I'd lie and say that I love you and if you think that will ever change you are going to be sorely-"

"Are you done."

Cloud stopped. Leon looked at him, eyes like flint, and asked again, this time with only slightly more inflection than last, "Are you _done?_ "

Cloud said nothing. Leon stood, hair still in disarray, cheeks still flushed. The red didn't look as if it was coming from arousal this time. Cloud couldn't tell whether his eyes looked as if they were burning, or if perhaps instead they looked cold.

"I didn't fall in love with you," he said, "because I thought it was going to be particularly easy. I didn't fall in love with you because I imagined you would be someone you didn't turn out to be. I didn't fall in love with you because I thought you were going to reciprocate, and we'd get move in together, or have kids together, or spend the rest of our lives staying by each other's sides. I fell in love with you because once upon a time I was having a bad day, and you didn't know me, and you were still kind."

He stepped forward. It took a huge strength of will for Cloud not to step back.

"I don't need you to love me," Leon said. "I don't even need you to like me. I don't need anything. That's the whole point. You can hate me, or be indifferent towards me, and I'll hate it, but I'll live. But don't tell me what I do or don't feel. I love you. That's all it is."

Cloud stared up at him, silent for a long moment. His eyes felt wide in his face; the line of his mouth felt unsteady, like they wanted to move but couldn't quite remember how to. He could work past that. There was nothing he couldn't do.

"I didn't ask for you to fall in love with me," he said. "I'm not required to reciprocate. I didn't ask. I didn't want it."

Leon made a strange, bitter sound in his throat. "I didn't ask for it either," he said. "But I have it. I don't have a choice except to try to deal with it now." He took a long, deep breath, and pressed his palm to his face. "I know I can't make you love me. I don't even really want to make you love me. But if it's okay with you, please let me at least stay here until you know me well enough to know that you'll never be able to feel a thing. I'll leave then. I'll let you entirely alone. I won't push. I won't touch you. I won't do anything except exist. Just don't ask me to fuck you because you're on an adrenaline high, or because you like how I look, or because I'm the only one here. Don't make me do that. I'll wait. Until the day you tell me you're tired, and you want me to leave."

The silence stretched for an eternity, but it was only when Leon noticed that the lean form underneath his was trembling that he realized something was wrong. He sat up quickly, eyes searching. Cloud was lying there, deathly white, eyes so wide in his face that his pupils looked the size of quarters.

"What did you say?" Cloud said.

"I said I'd wait," Leon responded. He laid the back of his hand across Cloud's forehead. "What…what's wrong? Are you okay?"

"You said you'd wait," Cloud said.

"Of course I did," Leon said, completely confused. "I love you, of course I would wait."

Cloud turned even whiter and his eyes grew impossibly larger in his face.

"Yeah," Cloud said. He let his gaze drift to the ceiling, unblinking. "I think I'm gonna be sick."

Leon swore and hauled Cloud to his feet, dragging him to an adjoining restroom. As soon as the door was open, Cloud broke away and threw himself in front of the toilet. He choked, then bid the contents of his stomach farewell. Leon squatted behind him, holding blond bangs out of Cloud's face as he retched into the porcelain tub. "It's okay," he whispered, not knowing if he was telling the truth but needing to say the words anyway. "You're okay. Don't worry, I'll take care of you. It'll be okay."

"I," Cloud managed to choke, wiping his hand across his mouth. "I don't…know."

"I'll get you a glass of water."

"Wait," Cloud said, hand darting out to close around Leon's wrist. "Please wait."

Leon sat back down, and Cloud heaved a huge sigh-relief, or fear, or exhaustion. Leon couldn't quite tell. He wrapped a hand around the back of Cloud's neck, began to massage it; thought about all the times someone had tried to offer physical affection to him when he'd been feeling this low and how often it had made him feel ill, let go. Cloud gave no indication that he cared. His hand was still iron around Leon's wrist. His palm felt fever-warm. "Tell me what to do."

Cloud shook his head, squeezed harder at Leon's wrist. "Nothing."

"I can help," Leon said. "I can help if only you'd tell me what to do."

"I'd give it to you to fix if you could," Cloud said. "But that's not the way the world works."

"Can I touch you?" Leon asked.

Cloud closed his eyes, and leaned back against him, and said, "yeah."

They sat there, back to chest, Cloud leaning against him and staring at the wall and trying not to think of anything except _blank, blank, blank_ while Leon kept an arm folded around Cloud's shoulders and said things Cloud could barely hear. He thought about how this was probably massively unfair; thought about the way Leon had looked when he'd said he'd loved him for years. It hadn't made sense weeks ago. It made even less sense now. The world worked in certain ways. Blind and introspective though he was, Cloud was even aware of some of them. People fell a little in love with strangers all the time. You saw someone on the bus, you walked by a person in the store. Your heart went still. But then they were gone, possibilities with them, and you got over it, because there was nothing else you could do. You didn't think of them years after, no matter how many times they'd driven by you on the street.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Sephiroth, and the boys, and Tifa and Rinoa and Leon.

"I didn't mean to turn out like this," he said, quieter than he meant. "I used to be so much happier. I used to think that maybe there were whole futures meant only for me."

"I feel like most people think that when they're young," Leon said. "But just because you're unhappy now doesn't meant that there's not a world out there for you if you keep trying to believe."

Cloud closed his eyes tight, and breathed. "Yeah," he said. "Okay." And then, "I like you. I'll let you. Please kiss me."

Leon stared at him, and did.

The drive home was quiet, Demyx staring out the window in silence while Zexion drove and thought very hard about how best to not think at all. He succeeded about as well as he could expect, given that Zexion had never in his life been able to shut his mind off. He'd spent his entire life drowning in the rooms of his head; the only reason he'd as of yet managed to escape anxiety was because he didn't often care enough about anything other than himself to get affected. But there was another person sitting beside him now, quiet and present and unable to escape from, and all Zexion wanted was to go home and get the hell out of this car.

There were reasons he'd never done this before. Most of them had to do with the fact that he'd never much wanted to. But Zexion had never found it easy to exist in the company of other people. Especially not when they'd gone from interest to distance within the space of a few hours, and a hundred reasons why kept bouncing around the inside of his head.

"I was thinking I'd go to the bookstore tomorrow," he said, eyes never leaving the road. "There's a large one about ten miles away."

Demyx moved in his periphery. It looked like a shrug. "Don't go much unless someone else drags me along," he said. "If I want anything, it generally ends up at the library. Never really saw much reason to go myself."

"They've a rather large music selection," Zexion said. "I might have thought that would be enough reason for you."

"Nah," Demyx said. "I can get everything at home. There's not really a lot for me to do."

And then he fell silent, and Zexion did as well, and he stared out the window and thought _What on earth did you possibly think?_

"I thought," he said, and felt nothing about how he'd been able to keep his voice still, "perhaps we could bring this to an end."

Demyx tapped nonsense beats on the glass. "Hm?"

"Our relationship," Zexion clarified. "I think perhaps it's time that we brought it to an end."

Demyx's fingers came to a rather abrupt stop.

"Pull over," he said.

Zexion blinked. "What?"

"Pull over!" Demyx said, voice a gasp, and frantically undid his seatbelt. Zexion cursed and swerved onto the road's shoulder, almost blindsiding a suburban. The second they came to something even resembling a halt, Demyx shoved his door open and jumped out of the car. He made it about five steps before he bent over, grabbing his knees. Zexion strode forward, reaching out to grab Demyx's arm. He'd only managed to brush it before Demyx jerked and spun away.

"Why?" Demyx asked. He took a step back, then took another forward. His words sounded uncomfortably like a gasp. "I mean-why?"

Zexion stared at him, stomach oddly tight. "Are you all right?"

"Of course I'm all right," Demyx said. "I'm just trying to understand how we went from talking about bookstores to you trying to break up with me when one hour ago we were in a restroom and your tongue was down my throat."

"You're the one who joined me," Zexion said. "And the fact that I left you halfway through the concert to catch my breath in a restroom should tell you that that probably wasn't something I wanted you to do."

Demyx's mouth went lax. Zexion watched him, feeling strangely distant and removed, and then took a step back. "Come on," he said, turning back to the car. "It's late, and I would like to go back home."

In the instant before Zexion moved, something in Demyx's eyes flashed.

"You're the one who said you liked me," he said.

Zexion stopped.

"You're the one who said it," Demyx said. "You told me, you said it, and I know why, and you know why, and you cannot stand there and look at me and pretend that you don't see in me everything you see every time you look in the mirror."

He walked forward. He didn't stop.

"You're horrible," Demyx said. "Literally, in your soul, you are horrible. The only reason you haven't spent the last decade hurting everyone you know is that your brother loves you, and your mother loves you, and Riku, for whatever the fuck it's worth, loves you, and you care about them enough that you'd try to be a good person for them. But it eats at you inside, that you need to smother the worst parts of yourself because of love. You're going to feel that. You're gonna feel that your whole life."

Zexion's heart was pounding. He wondered why its presence felt so wrong.

"What," he said, quiet as a snake, "are you possibly trying to accomplish here."

Demyx shrugged. His eyes were as deep as the sea.

"I'm telling you that you are me," Demyx said, "and that I don't know why you're blaming me for being distant or flighty or cruel, when you're never going to be a good person, too."

His eyes had gone wet, and his face had gone red. The vicious cruelty in his face hadn't fled, but it had been replaced by something that cracked at the edges, that left Demyx's voice open and young, as if the manipulative (and it had been manipulative, Zexion knew that very well) rant of one minute ago had only been a front to mask the fact that Demyx's first reaction upon hearing Zexion say the word _end_ had been to have what had almost been a panic attack. Demyx's shoulders bowed. He lifted his palms to his face.

"He told me you wanted me to be serious," Demyx said. "That you would never begin anything that wasn't serious. And I don't know if I can do that. I never wanted to. I like people, I like _so much_ , how on earth could I ever be serious. But I didn't want to leave you. Why are you getting mad at me for being cold when the only reason I've been cold is because I like you so much I don't know what to do."

Zexion looked at him. He just looked.

"I'm really not sure," he said at last, "whether I can take that as the truth."

"It is," Demyx said. "I won't lie to you. I promise I'll tell the truth."

"You'll lie to me every day of my life," Zexion said. "We're the same. Don't try to pretend that you know me any better or worse than I know you."

"Maybe," Demyx admitted. "But I'll try. I want so badly to try for you."

Zexion stood silent and still. And then he said, "I wanted you to come after me."

Demyx trembled, and looked. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing," Zexion said, and turned back to the car. "It was only that I wanted to give you a truth for a truth."

Sora woke up the next morning decidedly irritable. He didn't even want to think about the previous day. Too much drama, too much pain, and way too many hours spent at the mall. And so, he decided to do what he always did when stressed and angry: he laced up a pair of sneakers and went for a jog.

He never noticed one large shadow and two smaller ones trailing sinisterly after him.

He raced around the block, hopping over lawns and fences, trying to burn the irritation out of him. He was Sora fucking Strife, dammit! He didn't get irritated! He didn't feel angst! And he most definitely didn't dwell on things like the broken look he'd seen on Riku's face yesterday when he'd spun on his heels and walked away. Not at all.

It was a murderous Sora who finally slid to a halt in the middle of the local park, leaning over and grabbing at his knees. Dammit. He was even angrier now than he'd been when he'd awoken. He wasn't used to this; he was never this angry. He needed to head to the gym. Work some of his emotion off.

At that exact moment, however, an almost leviathan shadow fell over him, blocking out the entire sun. Sora whirled around, his mouth opening in surprise.

The hugest man he'd ever seen was standing there, holding a large tomahawk in one hand, swinging it fearsomely in a large arc.

"Your time has come, little boy," the giant said, eyes calm and solemn. "Prepare to die."

Sora's eyes widened in shock, and he took a step backward. And another.

And then he stopped, and let his lips curve into a grin.

"My time has come, huh?" he said with a long, low laugh. "Oh. Oh, you just wait."

No one-neither Lexaeus nor Sora nor Riku and Axel hiding behind their bushes, waiting to come to little Sora Strife's rescue-quite knew what happened after that. One minute Sora was there, and the next he was just…gone. A split second later, Lexaeus bellowed in agony and clutched at his twisted, now tomahawk-less hand.

"All right," Sora said. "I'll show you what happens when you mess with an irritated level 99 keyblade master!"

You had to give Lexaeus credit. He made it five minutes before he collapsed in a quivering pile and pointed at the bushes where Riku and Axel were now cowering in fear, roaring "It was them! It was all them! They hired me, I swear!"

Sora paused, eyes widening and mouth dropping in shock, before he let go of the mangled remains of what was once Zexion's best friend and stalked to the bushes, parting them furiously.

Sure enough, there were Riku and Axel, clutching at each other in terror. Sora stared at them for what seemed an eternity. And then he narrowed his eyes.

"You two," he whispered, voice curling silkily across the still summer air, "just made me beat up an innocent man."

"He's lying!"

"I'm sorry!"

Riku shot an irate look at Axel, then turned back to stare at Sora. Odd. Was he radiating red?

Sora's eyes flashed, and his pretty, cupids-bow mouth turned downward. "No," he breathed. "Not as sorry as you will be." He glanced at his watch, then turned back to the two boys.

"I'll give you a five second head start. Five, f-"

Axel and Riku leaped clear over the bushes and disappeared into the morning horizon. Three seconds later, Sora sprinted after them.

It was an exhausted pair of boys who collapsed at the Leonhart front lawn two hours later. Slowly, they began dragging themselves through the grass. Their sanctuary was mere feet away…they could make it…

A single black sneaker slammed down a bare inch in front of Axel's nose. Painfully slowly, two pairs of eyes trailed up, past khaki plants, past a black shirt, a half-vest, a frowning mouth, finally pausing at a pair of very beautiful, very blue, very angry eyes.

"I heard about Lexaeus," Roxas said, lips curled in a sinister grin. He cracked his knuckles.

An agony-filled hour later, Axel and Riku finally made it to the porch. They crawled up the steps and wearily knocked on the front door.

Zexion answered. He looked rather upset.

"What the hell did you two do to Lexaeus?!"


	17. Chapter 15: You Dick!

**Chapter Fifteen: You Dick!**

Current Betting Pool: Strife - 9872 munny Leonhart - 7831 munny

The Strife/Leonhart War: A Report, Compiled by Bartholomew Quigley Smeethington the 3rd, loyal second to the illustrious C. Hook, whose infamy spreads the seven seas, and whose name shall forever endure in the annals of history.

First draft; Article XI; Section XII, cont.

Following the placing of the bets by what shall herein be called the Council of Villains, both Disney and otherwise, the commotion on the Strife/Leonhart front grew even more fearsome than had previously been assumed possible. Our young pranksters, in addition, began revealing themselves to be almost superhuman in their separate resolves to upstage the opposing team.

Leading the war was the Strife family. With a vast number of contacts at their disposal, they quickly became the frontrunners of these battles, paving their way through the histories and becoming what some consider to be the greatest pranksters the world has seen since those redheaded twins of lore (names unknown, though they are sometimes associated with marsupials).

The Leonharts endeavored to upstage the Strife brothers, but to little avail, and this semi-failure has been clearly mirrored in the amount of wagers being placed all over Radiant Garden.

Subsequent to the Council of Villain's first conference, the hijinks took a turn towards the more dramatic. The Strifes, using their close friendship with one Tarzan Goodall, bought an entire set of man-eating pythons and placed them in a large, inflatable dirigible. Said dirigible was then surreptitiously placed inside the Leonhart kitchen. They called it Operation: Snakes on a Plane.

The Leonharts, once every last python had been thoroughly disposed of and sent to the appropriate containment facility, followed with Operation: Piranhas on an Escalator. Though not as successful as the first, it nonetheless provided quite a bit of amusement for all spectators.

Pranks of this sort began propagating, though shortly after the Piranha incident, the local animal rights activists signed a petition and mailed it to both Leonharts and Strifes. This petition asked for the exclusion of all animals from subsequent pranks. Said petition also included a bet of 300 munny, in favor of the Strifes.

At the time of this entry, The Strifes seem to have a large lead. It is likely that Riku Leonhart and Axel Tseng, the two young men heading the Leonhart front, will soon be forced to declare forfeit.

It would be most wise not to inform either Riku or Axel of this.

Leon was nervous.

He illustrated this by shining his shoes for an extra two minutes before he stepped out of his house, walked across the yard, and knocked on his (And here he paused, thinking the term over. Friend? Well, shit. They'd kissed, hadn't they? Boyfriend? Nah, their relationship wasn't so romantic. He would use the term fuck-buddy, but the latest upwelling of pranks, both evil and benign, had pretty much put a damper on any sort of sex life he aspired to. Every time he managed to get Cloud out of his shirt, a smoke bomb was thrown into their window) partner's front door. He idly shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

They'd been together (for some definition of the word together) for two weeks now. Two weeks since they'd nearly had sex in the middle of the practice room. Two weeks since they'd decided to give it a try.

So this is where we now find our stoic hero: trying.

The door creaked, and Leon opened his mouth, ready to deliver some carefully-planned, wonderfully executed speech regarding the merits of relationship building and grand dinners. And he would've, too, except Cloud immediately shrugged past him, asked, "Ready?" and, without waiting for an answer, hauled Leon's passenger's side door open and slid in.

Leon sighed, shoulders slumping. And this, of course, was the problem: Cloud didn't have a romantic bone in his body. Which wasn't to say that Leon Leonhart was a regular Casanova (the man had been on five dates in his life, and hadn't even realized any of them were 'dates' until halfway through, and then only because the dinner partners in question would finally come to the realization that Leon was in it only for the grub). But at least he knew (and by ' _knew,_ ' he meant ' _had been informed by Tifa ten minutes earlier'_ ) it was standard protocol to compliment your partner on his or her choice of clothes before they left the house. Or to comment on the weather. Or their favorite sports team. Anything, really.

"You look nice," Leon muttered, opening the driver's side door and sliding himself inside.

Cloud blinked down at his apparel, face almost confused.

"Oh," he said. "I guess. Rinoa insisted she help me pick out what clothes to wear. Apparently, jeans aren't standard when one is eating at a restaurant like LoD."

Leon stifled a choke, and Cloud raised an eyebrow at him. "That was a joke," he said, completely deadpan. "I'm not that much of an idiot. And you look nice, too. Though I still don't know why you chose a restaurant a good hour's drive away. It seems far, don't you think?"

Leon shrugged, pulling out of the driveway. He aimed a small smile at his blond counterpart. "Yeah," he said, glancing out the rearview mirror. "But it's the nicest one within a hundred miles."

"I don't mind hotdogs and pizza," Cloud said.

"Also if we eat at any of the ones here the boys will probably end up blowing it up."

"Ah," Cloud says. "Makes sense."

Leon snorted, but made no effort to hide the smile working his lips up.

They spent the next hour in companionable discussion, laughing and arguing and discussing the weather and sports teams.

Neither men noticed the two taxi cabs trailing sinisterly after them.

An hour later, Leon and Cloud parked their car, walked inside the classy Chinese restaurant named Land of Dragons, and claimed their reservation.

An hour and five minutes later, Sora, Roxas, and Demyx piled out of their taxi, where they proceeded to charm and joke the maitre d' into giving them a table with a clear view of Leon and Cloud.

An hour and ten minutes later, Riku and Axel stepped out of their own taxi and strolled into the restaurant, where they also proceeded to charm and joke the maitre d' into giving them a table with a clear view of the couple.

An hour and fifteen minutes later, Riku leaned across the restaurant table and glared at his best friend. "The bastard had to pick the only chair blocking my view!" he hissed irritably. "I can't see. Tell me what's going on."

Axel cocked his head to the right slightly, his eyes focused on some spot over Riku's shoulder. "Leon and Cloud both just reached for the same egg roll. Serious staring contest going on. They look like they're gonna punch each other for...wait, Leon gave up the egg roll."

Riku's eyes widened, and he resisted the urge to turn and stare. "Leon?" he asked, shocked. "Leon gave up an egg roll?!"

"I tell you no lie," Axel insisted, leaning forward. "Cloud looks like he's saying thanks. He's…oh, what's this? He's cutting the roll in half? Holy shit, he's feeding it to him. In public!"

Riku really did turn around this time, leaning out of his chair to stare in abashment at the couple awkwardly avoiding each other's eyes even as they fed each other. And then his gaze slid past them and to the trio of boys huddling in a corner, eagerly watching the show Leon and Cloud were obliviously performing. The trio of very, very familiar boys. His mouth dropped open.

"What?" Axel asked, popping a wonton into his mouth. "What's wrong?"

Riku's eyes narrowed, the expression oddly delighted. "Oh, those little bastards," he growled happily. "They're here."

Axel raised an eyebrow, slurping up a bowl of soup noisily. "You still haven't let go of the fact that a kid a foot shorter than you caused you massive internal bleeding and nearly put you in the hospital, have you?"

Riku grinned like a child who'd just been left alone in a candy store. And then he grabbed the bowl of wontons, took careful aim, and chucked them through the air.

In their small corner of Land of Dragons, Zack grinned at Aerith over their wine glasses. The pretty brunette smiled back sweetly, lifting a forkful of sesame chicken to her tiny, pink mouth.

Zack sighed in the manner of one who is either lovesick or dying, and reached a hand into his right pocket, fingering the small, velvet box found there. Tonight was the night. Cloud was finally gone. He'd shown up two weeks earlier to pack his bags, and had promptly vacated the premises, with promises never to impose upon their kindness again. Aerith had smiled and insisted that Cloud would always be welcome in their home. Zack, being the loyal best friend he was, had agreed.

Five minutes later, when his girlfriend left to cook one last dinner for the three friends, he'd pulled the blond aside and had informed him quite succinctly that if Cloud ever interfered with his plans to propose again, he'd chop the blond's balls off and cast them into a set of earrings.

This, of course, was not to say that Zack wasn't grateful for the change that had transformed his best friend, so subtly he'd barely noticed at first. He was. There was an ease in the way Cloud carried himself now, and Zack hadn't seen a smile void of all worries on him for so long he'd forgotten Cloud had ever been capable of one. He wasn't happy; Zack couldn't remember the last time he'd seen his best friend truly happy. It had been years. Before the move from Nibelheim, anyway. But something had been lifted from the other man's shoulders, and Zack was about ready to kiss the person who'd caused it. And now he was gone, and Zack sat inside the nicest restaurant in a hundred miles, twirled the small box hidden within his pockets between two fingers, and sighed.

"Aerith," he murmured suddenly. His girlfriend paused, wineglass hovering in the air, poised between two delicate fingers.

"You know I love you," he continued. He leaned forward and gently plucked the glass from her hand, placing it back onto the table. His lips grew in a soft smile, and he took both of her smaller hands between his. "That I'd do anything for you."

"I know," Aerith answered, smile serene and so loving it almost hurt to look at her.

"Well, good," he said, voice flustered. "Because I do. But…that's not the point. The point is that I love you. And…and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to wake up to your cooking every day, and I want to help you wash the dishes, and I want to…be with you."

"Me, too," she said, eyes dropping to the table, mouth curving upwards. "Forever."

"Yeah," Zack half-sighed. His hands were squirming in his pockets now, jiggling the small velvet case. "Yeah. So…what I wanna say is…"

Zack took a deep breath and steadied himself. He dug a hand into his pocket, pulled the little box from it, and tilted the lid back.

"Aerith," he said, staring up determinedly into the sparkling green eyes of his one true love. "Will you marry me?"

Aerith smiled, and opened her mouth to answer-

-just as a simmering bowl of wontons landed flat on her head.

Not one minute before trays of Chinese food would begin flying through the air, Sora, Demyx, and Roxas were watching their cousin flirt with the married man next door and debating whether or not this could potentially turn them all into in-laws.

Everything was going perfectly, if by _perfectly_ you meant that Cloud looked like he was on the fast track to giving it up to the adopted father of their arch rival (was it adultery if the relationship was mutually polygamous?), and Leon looked as if he was a step away from an act of public indecency. Cloud had given up half of an egg roll, Leon was smiling so much he looked ill, and the brothers Strife were beginning to wonder whether they should be congratulations themselves for having had the foresight to rent a taxi, or trying to disappear.

And then a flying bowl of wontons soared over their heads and landed directly on Aerith Gainsborough's. And just like that, their glimmering evening went a little dull.

Roxas and Sora both shot from their seats, heads turning in an attempt to catch the foul, treacherous villain who'd so upset their evening. It turned out to be the wrong move, because a split second later a glob of shrimp fried rice flew through the suddenly quiet room and landed flat on their faces.

Demyx carefully slid his chair to the right, peering through the crowd. "Ah," he muttered finally. "There's Riku. Holding a plate of noodles. The two of you might wanna duck."

Sora and Roxas, quite obviously, did no such thing. Instead, they each took hold of identical plates of General Tsao's, flung their hands back, took careful aim, and let chicken fly.

One managed to find its target and lodged itself directly in red spikes of hair belonging to Axel (who, to be fair, was doing his level best to drag Riku out of the restaurant, though with little success). The other found itself intercepted by blond spikes as Cloud Strife stood up, finally having noticed Zack and Aerith sitting four tables away, both covered in wontons and staring blankly at an engagement ring.

Cloud blinked, raised a hand to his delicately coiffed spikes, and removed a small piece of sauce-covered chicken. He stared down at it for a minute. Then slowly, his eyes fell on his three younger cousins, all of whom were trying to hide beneath their table.

"Oh," he hissed, flinging the piece of General Tsao's chicken to the floor. "You've done it now."

The next day, all participants of the subsequent food fight would stare down at their newspapers, cringe at their bespattered images, and wonder how exactly they'd ever thought that flinging Chinese food around in a five-star restaurant would be a good idea. None would ever be able to come up with an adequate explanation.

Ten minutes later, Land of Dragons had been vacated, janitors were solemnly mopping up the remains of what had been the most spectacular food fight the world had ever seen, and every Leonhart, Strife, and Tseng in existence had been banned from all LoD restaurants in a three thousand mile radius.

This is where we now find them: standing outside Land of Dragons,staring at the 'We're Closed' sign on said restaurant, and pondering what exactly had happened.

And then Leon, covered in noodles, rice, and egg drop soup, turned towards the five teenagers and pointed a trembling finger at his suburban.

"Get in the car."

The ride back was moderately silent. Cloud and Leon exchanged small talk from their spots in the front seats, and Riku, Axel, Sora, and Roxas-squeezed into the backseat of Leon's car-kept their mouths...

...yeah, I'm not even going to try to lie to you here.

"Keep your filthy hands as far away from my person as humanly possible, thank-you-very-much," Roxas snarled.

Beside him, Axel shot him an incredulous glare. "I was reaching into my pocket. Sorry get your hopes up, Blondie, but we're in public."

"Then kindly move your waist an inch to the side."

"There are five of us back here," Axel hissed. "There's no where to go."

In the front seat, Leon's hands twitched on the wheel. Cloud took one look at him, paled, then turned to make shushing motions with his hands at the boys in the back seat.

"Well, if you hadn't refused to sit on your best friend's lap to make the squeeze a bit easier for all of us..." Roxas muttered. "Sora has no problem sitting on Demyx's lap."

"Right here, you know," Sora muttered. "No need to draw me into the argument."

Leon's hands clenched on the steering wheel, and Cloud's movements grew a bit more frantic. Predictably, he was ignored.

"That's because your family is a little too close."

Both Riku and Roxas spun towards him, each shoving him in the other's direction. "Take that back!"

"Again, I'm right here. There's no need to defend my honor."

"Shut up, Sora."

"Don't tell him to shut up!"

"And don't tell me what to do!"

"That's it!" Leon bellowed suddenly. His hands jerked, and the car swerved towards the curb so violently his six passengers all had to lean to the left to keep it on four wheels. He turned in his seat, glaring at the five now-petrified boys. "Out!"

Five pairs of eyes blinked in unison. "What?"

"You fucking heard me!" Leon roared. "Get out of the car! You little fuckers can walk home!"

Riku opened his mouth, closed it, and then repeated the motion until his throat decided to check back in. "You're joking, right?"

"Like fuck I'm joking! Get out of my car! The five of you! Out!"

Demyx shoved the door open, throwing himself from the seat, Sora squawking and tumbling out after him. The other three boys remained there, blinking owlishly at the red-faced demon howling at them.

"You…" Axel licked suddenly-dry lips, and chanced a glance outside. "You do realize it's past midnight, we're in the middle of nowhere, our cell phones have no reception, and the surrounding fields could very well be teeming with hobos and murderers out to steal our organs."

Cloud glanced up curiously. Surely Leon wouldn't force his adopted son and the rest of the boys to walk thirty plus miles back home, just over an argument? He opened his mouth to argue with his…(And here he paused, thinking the term over. Friend? Well, shit. They'd kissed, hadn't they? Boyfriend? Nah, nothing so romantic. He'd use fuck-buddy, but the latest upwelling of pranks, both evil and benign, had pretty much put a damper on any sort of sex life he aspired to. Every time Leon managed to get him out of his shirt, a smoke bomb was thrown into their window )…companion.

Then closed it. Aw, hell. The little bastards were pissing him off, too.

"You heard him, didn't you?" Cloud asked calmly, keeping his gaze carefully averted from his three younger cousins. "The five of you have done nothing but snipe at each other for the past half hour. You ruined our dinner. I'm amazed Leon was kind enough to offer you all rides back in the first place."

Every remaining boy in the back seat fell silent, and finally, Roxas and Axel both slowly climbed out of the suburban, silently refusing to make eye contact. Riku scowled and hugged his seatbelt a little tighter around himself. Leon looked at him through the rear view mirror.

"Riku," he breathed silkily. Around him, the wind picked up, and strands of brown hair started to whirl around his face. "If you do not step out of the car this instant, I swear on all things good and holy that I will destroy you. And then I will pack you off to stand before a council comprised of your mother, Yuffie, and that horrible Selphie girl who blabbers on every day about true love and the importance of maintaining healthy relations between partners. And when they discover that you are fucking with me and mine, I will lock you in the room with them and wait. And when they are done with you, I will make it my life's purpose to do everything in my power to make sure you never get laid again, so help me God!"

Riku's eyes widened. A scant two seconds later, he was throwing himself from his seat, realizing only belatedly that he'd forgotten to unbuckle his seatbelt.

It was a red-faced Riku who finally tumbled out of the car, ignoring the leers, guffaws, and glares the other four teenagers aimed at him. Not half a second later, the door closed behind him and Leon and Cloud sped away into the night.

Demyx blinked after them. "Please tell me that did not just happen."

"No," Sora said beside him, staring blankly at the spot the Leonhart's red suburban once resided. "I think it did."

Silence descended upon them for a moment, as each member of the five-person team of castaways contemplated mass homicide. And then Demyx pulled out a cell phone from his pocket and started dialing.

"Wha…who are you calling?" Axel asked curiously, walking forward. "Don't tell me you-"

"I'm calling my ride," Demyx hissed, lifting the phone to his ear. Beside him, the four other boys immediately perked up.

"We're saved!" Sora cried happily. "Oh, Demyx, you've always been my favorite bro-"

"No!" Demyx shrieked, whirling around to point an accusing finger at each of the four miscreants in turn. "Absolutely not! This is all your fault! I'm not the one who started throwing rice and wontons in the middle of the classiest restaurant in a hundred-mile radius! I'm not the one who pissed off my cousin and next-door-neighbor so badly they decided to toss us out of the car sixty miles from home! I am innocent, dammit! He is my ride, and the four of you can find your own!"

They stared at him for a moment, shell-shocked. And then someone obviously picked up the phone on the other line, because Demyx started speaking. "Oi!" he barked, eyes glaring daggers at the everyone surrounding him, daring them to speak up. "I'm twenty minutes from Land of Dragons. Yeah, that restaurant. No, I have not seen the news yet. I need a lift. Now, preferably. Will you please come pick me up?" A pause. Then, "Yes, I'm alone. Or I will be, as soon as these idiots start walking. My ride back home...fell through." Here, he aimed ocular fire at his companions. "No, I have no problem going out to eat with you. Yes, I'll be waiting right here. No, I will not talk to strangers. You'd like to share a laugh at their expense? Done. Hahaha _ha_. Yes, I do feel better. Half an hour? Thanks. Bye."

He hung up the phone so furiously his thumb almost buried itself in the touch pad. Beside him, the other four boys stood agape.

"I…cannot believe you just did that," Sora said in shock. "My own brother."

Demyx took a seat on the grass. "Believe it. I'm gonna be pissed at you for the next week."

"What I don't get," Riku began, still staring at the once-cheerful sitarist squatting on the ground, "Is how the hell you managed to get reception when we're thirty miles from civilization, in the middle of what looks to be a…a prairie." He dug his own hand into his pocket, pulling a small black cellular and staring at it. "Yeah. I've got no signal."

Demyx jerked his head towards him, eyes just slightly crazed. "It's because God smiles on those who don't start food-fights in five star restaurants," he hissed, shaking a trembling fist at the white-haired boy. "Now get out of my face. And start walking." The glower turned into a smirk, and he jerked his head down the path. "You've still got thirty miles before you hit Radiant Garden. Chop chop."

Axel started towards him angrily, but Roxas shoved the redhead aside, sending him tumbling down a ditch. "Come on, Sora," he muttered, grabbing him by the forearm and maneuvering the still shell-shocked boy down the road. "Let's go."

The brunet nodded, stumbling after his brother. Behind them, Riku glanced at his muttering best friend and hurried after them. A few moments later, Axel pulled himself out of the trench and sauntered down the road, sending one last glare at Demyx.

"I cannot believe we're stuck walking thirty miles with you two," Roxas hissed a good ten minutes later, staring straight ahead, eyes narrowed. "I'm not sure who I pissed off up in heaven, but-"

"Oh, shut up," Riku snorted, shoving his hands into his pockets. "It's just as much your fault as ours. If I recall correctly, you're the one who started the argument in the car."

"Actually," Sora said, "Axel's the one who started squirming around. Roxas was just responding to the invasion of his personal space. So technically, Axel's the one who started the argument. And none of this would've happened if you hadn't thrown the wontons."

Riku glowered at him for a moment and opened his mouth to speak, but Axel shoved against him. "It doesn't matter," he drawled, shrugging. "What matters is that you three idiots are suggesting we walk the thirty miles back home. Down an abandoned road. At-" He squinted down at his watch. "-ten o'clock at night. Alongside a prairie, where drop bears are probably lying in wait ready to steal our organs. And on top of that, this road's got turns. And crossways. And it divides. And I'm not sure about any of you bozos, but I for one don't know where the fuck I am."

All three boys turned to stare at him. "What?" Roxas asked, lifting a derisive eyebrow. "You're suggesting we wait here?"

"Our parents'll come looking for us sooner or later," Axel responded, clenching his fists. "Tifa'll flip when she realizes Leon left us behind. And my mom…" He gulped, but continued onward doggedly. "Well, she'll be…pissed. But once she realizes I'm not where I'm supposed to be, she'll drive clear across the world to drag me home." He sat down, crossing his legs together. "We just kip out here, and sooner or later someone'll come pick us up."

"You don't know how long that might take," Roxas hissed. "Who knows how many of our body organs will be circling the black market by then. No," he growled, glowering angrily at the redhead. "We're walking."

"I actually do agree with Roxas," Sora muttered. "They can't catch us if we keep moving. It can't be that hard finding our way home, and it's not like we can't protect ourselves from anyone who wants to start a fight."

"Yeah," Axel sneered, rolling his eyes to the side. "Sure. Unfortunately, though, we don't all possess the upper body strength needed to break a six foot tall body builder in half over one knee, or the stamina necessary to chase two innocents halfway across town faster than Vinnie when he's been hitting up the _Jenova_."

Sora's flush was visible even under the moonlight, and Roxas narrowed his eyes.

"Innocents," he grunted derisively. "Sure. So says the one who paid off said six foot tall body builder and had him harass my elder broth-"

"He wasn't harassing him!" Riku shouted. "He was just gonna scare him a bit!"

"Fine," the blond grit from between clenched teeth. "So says the one who paid off said six foot tall body builder and had him scare my elder brother-"

"We were gonna save him," the white-haired boy hissed. "It was supposed to be-"

"Another one of your half-assed attempts at seduction," Roxas sneered. "I know. So what was it gonna be? You save the guy and expect him to fall into your arms?"

"You know," Sora muttered irritably. "I'm right here."

"And so what if I did? I don't see why you're being such a bastard about this! I like him, dammit! Why can't you see that I-"

"Sorry, kid," Axel sighed, sidling up to the brunet and nodding at the shouting pair. "But they'll probably be at it for a while."

"Because you're an asshole who hasn't been able to keep from mentally undressing him since the moment you-"

Sora groaned softly, massaging at the bridge of his nose. He peered up at the tall redhead, squinting against the dim light. "Hey. What say we leave these two dorks and continue walking?" He grinned. "If it's just the two of us, it'll be easier to protect you from the drop bears. Promise."

"You're a dick!"

Axel glanced at the other two, then shrugged. "Ten munny says that it takes 'em a fifteen minutes before they notice we're gone." He laughed, already beginning to walk down the road.

"No, you're a dick!"

"Nah," Sora laughed, running to catch up with the smirking redhead. "Twenty says it takes 'em thirty. It's sort of sad."

"Hmm?"

Sora smiled, but the expression seemed strained. "I mean Roxas really hates him. More than I've seen him hate anyone else in my life." A twitch, then the grin returned full force. "'cept maybe you."

The older boy's fists clenched loosely. Sora didn't notice. "Why is that?" Axel asked. "I've never really done anything to the kid. Now, Riku I can sort of understand. You're Roxas's brother; of course he'd be protective over you."

"Hah," Sora said, squirming slightly. "Protective. Yeah. Sure. If that's what you wanna call it."

Axel grinned. "Whatever. The point is, he has no reason to hate me. I've never done anything to his precious older brother. I've never done anything to him."

Sora paused in his steps suddenly, and Axel cocked his head, slowing down. "What's wrong?" he asked curiously. "Why'd ya stop?"

The brunet glanced down, his face obscured by night and shadows. He shrugged. Axel could make out the faint outline of the younger boy's fingers clenching and unclenching in his pockets. "C'mon,"Axel said, jerking his head back down the road. "Don't stop. Let's go."

Sora nodded, and they continued walking, silence descending upon them. A few minutes later, though, he sighed, pulling a hand from his pockets and tugging at a brown spike of hair. "The thing is, Axel," Sora muttered, gnawing at his lower lip. "You have."

"Huh? Have what?"

"Done something to him," Sora answered, the calm in his voice belied by the way his hands were tugging hard at his hair. "To Roxas, I mean. And that's why he hates you."

It was Axel who paused in his steps this time. "I never did anything to him," he said. "Nothing personal, anyway."

"You hurt his pride."

"That's a shit reason and you know it."

"Maybe so," Sora nodded. "But it's his reason. You have to understand it."

"I don't have to understand anything," Axel snarled, stalking down the road, hands clenching and unclenching. "The jerk-"

"You do," Sora said, jogging after him, hand wrapping around Axel's elbow. "You do. You like him. I didn't think so at first. I thought you were just fooling around. Having some fun for the summer. But you do. You really, really do."

"Bullshit," Axel repeated, but there was no bite to his words. "You don't know anything."

"I do," Sora said, and there was such a calm sort of finality to his words that Axel couldn't bring himself to hold his gaze. What little of it he could see, anyway, with the only light coming from the not-yet-full moon. "You do. In the course of the last month, you've been lied to, punched, kicked, slapped, TP-ed, egged, and generally made a complete fool out of. There's more to this than infatuation. It's not even the challenge anymore, though I suspect that's a large part of it. But there's a bigger reason, and that reason is that you've fallen in love with him."

Axel snorted, but his eyes still wouldn't meet Sora's.

"Sure," he muttered finally. "Whatever. Believe what you wanna. But even if I did love him, it wouldn't change anything. The kid's fucked, and if this last month has taught me anything, it's that Roxas doesn't change his mind. It's not like there's anything I can do to help my cause."

"You can," Sora said, voice tinged with frustration now. "That's what I'm trying to say. So just shut up and listen for a moment, so I can say my piece and then we can decide what to do."

Axel blinked at him. And then he blinked again. "Wait. We?"

Sora cringed, and began squirming abashedly. "Yeah," he mumbled. "We. I…sorta want to call this thing to an end. It's been fun and all, but…really. It's getting sorta difficult."

A raised eyebrow. "How so?"

Sora whined deep in his throat, and shifted from one foot to the other, looking for all the world like he needed to pee. And then, finally, he erupted. "I'm running out of ideas!" he cried, tugging even harder at his hair. "You don't understand! I'm the one who comes up with everything! I'm the great mastermind behind our every insidious plot to upstage Team Leonhart! And my fountain of schemes is drying up! I don't know what to do!" He moaned, and Axel swore he saw an entire chunk of hair flutter to the ground. "Don't you see? The TP-ing should have been a telltale sign. What other possible pranks can I come up with?! Dalmatians? Done. Giant wangs? Done. Prank calls and egging and paint-balling? Done done done! I'm finished, Axel," Sora groaned, bowing his head. "I have no more ideas. If we don't end this now, we're gonna end up relying on unacceptable levels of ding dong ditch."

The redhead opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. Finally, "You do realize you just told the enemy that you were out of ammunition?"

Sora slumped. "Great," he mumbled. "One more thing I screwed up. I should just lock myself in a room with Vinnie and let him eat me."

Axel snorted and slung a companionable arm around the younger boy's shoulder. "Nah, no worries," he grinned, ruffling brown spikes with a careless hand. "Tell the truth, we're not exactly much better off. For the last two weeks, we've been stuck asking Selphie for advice on how to handle this thing."

A surprised chuckle, and Sora hid a grin. "You're kidding? Selphie?"

"Yeah," Axel sighed. "Though, to tell the truth, she doesn't much help us with the pranking. It's more of an…"

"Inspirational thing. Yeah," Sora said. "I know. It's Selphie."

A sigh. "Yeah." Axel paused for a minute, then turned back to glance at the other boy. "You never finished what you were gonna say," he mumbled, voice gruff. "About your brother."

Something in Sora's face tightened, but he didn't turn to look at the person walking beside him. Instead, he turned his gaze up to the sky. "Roxas loves me," he said finally. "We're brothers. And he's always been the mature one. Me and Demyx…we're not that smart when it comes to real-life stuff. Roxas is the one who pulls us along. He holds everything together. He…" He sighed, shrugging simply. "He loves us. And whether or not we need it, he protects us. Or at the very least, he tries."

"That doesn't explain Demyx." Axel interrupted quietly. "He's your brother, too. But Roxas never had a problem with Zexion."

Sora closed his eyes for a minute, face never turning away from the skies. "Demyx is Demyx. He spends half his life sure that the monster under the bed is going to eat him, and the other half confident in his total invincibility. And he's cold. You don't see it much, because he laughs, but he doesn't care about anybody, except sometimes us. No one can hurt him unless he lets them. There's no protecting him from anything. Not about the important things. He looks after himself."

"And you can't?"

The brunet shook his head, though the motion was neither agreement nor disagreement. "It's not the point," he answered easily. "Riku's the point. I…" He took another breath, and his steps sped up slightly. "I'm not sure why Roxas hated him so much, from the very beginning. Forgotten memories of a past life, if I believed in that kind of thing. But something about Riku rubbed Roxas the wrong way, and he made it worse by…"

"Wanting you," Axel finished.

"Who knows," Sora said. "The thing is, when you showed up with Riku that day, you threw your lot in with him. You were his best friend. The enemy by association. Roxas was always going to be tough on you. But it might have worked out. You might have become friends. And Axel," Sora said suddenly, spinning around to glare ardently at the taller boy. "You have to understand. The reason it didn't work out that way is not your fault."

"What are you talking ab-"

"Listen, just listen. The reason why Roxas hates you so much," Sora said, "is because he doesn't."

Axel blinked at him. "I hope you don't expect me to tell you that that made any sense."

"You hurt his pride, Axel," Sora said, repeating the words he'd let slip a good five minutes ago. "You show up alongside Riku, and all of a sudden you're challenging him left and right. You flirt with him. You argue with him. You become someone he-under normal circumstance-would like. But you're on the wrong side. You're teaming up with the one person he hates in the world. And he hates himself for wishing you could be friends. And so this hate bleeds into his view of you." Sora sighed and dug his hands into his pockets.

"That's why he hates you," he murmured quietly. "That's why he won't forgive you. Not until this deal with Riku is over. You're someone he can see himself liking, and you're associating with the epitome of evil in the world. Roxas sees it almost as betrayal." He smiled softly, shrugging. "How could he not dislike you for that?"

Axel paused in his steps. He could no longer hear the voices of the two ranting teens behind them, and he wondered idly if they'd yet realized that he and Sora had disappeared. With his luck, Roxas had probably come to the conclusion that Axel had gone and kidnapped him.

"So," he finally murmured, tilting his head back to glare up at the stars. "Basically, once Roxas realizes that Riku is not the incarnation of Satan, he'll begin warming up to me."

"Pretty much, yeah," Sora answered brightly, smiling.

"So," Axel sing-songed, lifting a mischievous eyebrow. "All we gotta do is hook you up with him. And when Roxas realizes that Riku's love for you is pure and selfless and all that good shit, he'll fall into my waiting arms, and we'll get married and buy an apartment and have 2.5 kids."

"Sometimes," Sora sighed in the manner of one much put-upon, "I'm not sure even you understand your logic."

"Of course I do!" Axel laughed, curling an arm around the smaller boy's shoulders and tugging him towards him, mussing his hair up affectionately. "It's simple! You hook up with Riku. The guy's already helplessly in love with you, and Roxas'll grow to see that soon enough. When he figures out that Riku ain't so bad, he'll realize that neither am I. So we'll be friends. And, fuck; the entire world knows that the best relationships start with friendship, right? Well, that and arranged marriages." He paused suddenly, thumbing his lower lip in curiosity. "Huh. You think if I talk to my Mom, she can convince yours to hand Blondie over to me?"

"Shut up," Sora muttered, but there was something in his voice that sounded strangely off. "And don't be an idiot. Roxas wouldn't."

"But it's the truth, isn't it?" Axel grinned. "All you have to do is say yes to the kid! Take one for the team! You like him, don't you?"

Sora glanced at him, and this time there was no question; there really was something odd flitting in the planes of his face.

"I don't know," he said softly. He shrugged, then turned to stare at the redhead, who looked far more surprised than he had any right to be. "I'm not saying I hate him. But. I've known him for a month. Most of that time was spent making each other's lives miserable. How can I be expected to fall in love in the middle of that? He's just a…" A sigh. "A person I could be friends with. A person I'd love to be friends with, if this thing ever ends. But how can I say that I'll be able to fall in love with him? How can I promise that? And why would you ask me to?"

Axel turned away, and kept walking. "Because he's my friend, and your brother's the one I like. Of course I'd ask you to. I don't care about you the way I care about them."

Sora laughed. It wasn't a very happy sound, though. "I follow my family," he said. "I've followed Roxas in all of this, and whether I believe he's wrong or right is less important than the fact that he's my brother. And if…if this ever ends, then…who knows? Maybe the two of you could be happy together. It's not like Roxas hated you from the first. You've got a shot. But not even for my brother would I date someone I wasn't sure about. He wouldn't want me to. But more importantly, neither would I. I'm sorry."

Axel said nothing for the longest while, then sighed. "Don't apologize," he said. "I shouldn't have asked."

They walked in silence a moment longer, before Sora sighed. "It wouldn't work anyway. Roxas would know. See, for the last month, you've been acting under the assumption that Roxas is an idiot. He'd realize fairly quickly that I'd just be doing it to give you a chance. And then he'd hate you for doing that to me. For being involved." He exhaled softly. "We're in a bit of a fix, y'know. Roxas has to honestly forgive Riku. Riku has to honestly work towards his respect. After that…" A small smile, wistful around the edges. "After that, we could go back to being just neighbors. Friends. Wouldn't that be nice?"

They fell into silence, sauntering slowly down the grass-lined road. Neither was sure how much time had passed before Axel finally spoke.

"He loves you, you know," he muttered, shoving his hands into his pockets. He ignored the way Sora stiffened, how his eyes shuttered and fell. "I catch him thinking about you sometimes. I can tell, because he'll start muttering to himself, but his eyes go soft. He'll just start smiling for no reason, even while he's yelling and plotting your doom. He gets the same look on his face your chocobo does every time he sees that moomba prancing down the street. It's weird, but it's him, and it's...love, I think. It would be strange, if it weren't Riku."

Sora didn't answer immediately. He tilted his chin back, staring up at the cool night skies. It was odd to think that thirty miles away, families were resting in their warm beds, arms wrapped around their loved ones. It was odd to think that the world wasn't aware of them. Wasn't aware of these four boys, and the hole they'd managed to dig themselves into.

"Yeah," he finally murmured. "Yeah. I think I know. I'm sorry. I never meant..."

"No one ever thought you did."

Sora smiled up at him, gratefully. His head slanted suddenly, and he turned back to stare down the dark road. "Oi," he murmured, nodding down the path they'd just came from. "I think I hear them."

"Bastard! What have you done with my brother?!"

"Axel, if you've touched him, I swear, I will step on your balls!"

Redhead and brunet turned to each other and laughed uneasily. "Yeah," Sora grinned. "I think that's them."

"You're dead, fucker! Dead!"

"Axel, don't you hide!"

"How did I know the first thing Roxas would think of would be abduction?" Axel muttered. He smirked and slid an arm around the smaller boy's waist. "What say we let 'em catch us in a compromising position? Just to make our lives even more complicated."

Sora laughed and took off at a run down the street.

It was the oddest thing, but he couldn't help but feel that he'd almost made a new friend.

Leon pulled into his driveway and slid the car into park, tugging the keys out of the ignition and placing them in his pocket. He sighed, then tilted his head against the seat to glance at Cloud. "Sorry about all that," he muttered. "I didn't think the kids would show up."

Cloud shrugged, but continued staring straight ahead. "No worries," he said. "I should have known. And it's not like it was a total waste. I was enjoying myself. You know, up until the whole getting kicked out of the nicest restaurant within a hundred miles thing."

Leon winced at the reminder, but the expression slowly melted as he began chuckling. "Yeah," he said. "Me, too." He paused for a minute, then began again. "Hey, Cloud, do you think we could do that again som-"

Cloud leaned over and covered the other man's mouth with his own.

Leon almost choked himself trying to remove his seatbelt while refusing to separate from the blond.

It was a very breathless pair who pulled away some ten minutes later, flushed and panting.

"So," Leon half-gasped, eyes still slightly unfocused. "That's a yes?"

Cloud rolled his eyes and leaned in again.

Fifteen minutes later, Rinoa Strife, née Heartilly, pulled into her driveway. She took one look at the two men, sighed, walked up, opened the door, and pulled a struggling Cloud Strife bodily out the car and into their house, leaving one very confused Squall 'Get the name right, dammit' Leonhart to stare after them in shock.

He sat there for the next minute, trying to figure out why his ex-girlfriend had just interrupted the hottest make-out session he'd ever had. Ten later, he decided the interruption was less important than what had occurred prior to it, and all-but-strolled merrily into his house.

When Tifa, sprawled on the living room sofa reading M.R. Merlin's latest bestseller ( _1001 Ways to Divorce Your Husband And Retain All Marital Assets plus Joint-Custody of the Kids, 31st Edition_ ), looked up and noticed that her soon-to-be ex-husband had just walked inside, she grinned.

"So," she said, taking a long, careful look at the rumpled collar, flushed cheeks, and unbuttoned dress shirt. "How'd it go?"

Leon jumped, turning to glance at her as if he'd just noticed her presence in his living room. "Oh," he said. "It was nice."

The brunette snorted, chucking her book at her husband's head. "Jerk. Fess up. What'd you do?"

Leon said nothing, but waved a hand over his shoulder and began walking towards the stairs. Tifa leapt to her feet and began striding after her spouse, but her steps faltered suddenly as a new thought entered her head, and she fell short.

"Hey, Leon?" she asked curiously. He paused and glanced over his shoulder at her, eyebrows raised. The woman peered at the door, almost worriedly. "Where're the boys? They asked for the name of the restaurant you were taking Cloud to, so I assumed they went to go spy on you, but they haven't called me to say that they're on their way home yet."

Leon choked, glaring at her incredulously. "You gave them-"

"Quiet, darling," Tifa barked, eyes narrowing. "This isn't about me, it's about you. Now answer me. Where are my boys?"

Leon took one look at Tifa's face, and his own drained of color.

"So," he muttered, backing away towards the stairs slowly, with all the shrewdness of a mouse right about to dart away from the snarling, drooling, evil moomba whose jaws of death were looming ever closer. "Tifa. What you have to understand is-"

"Leon."

The reader must remember that Leon is a very intelligent man. Rational, too. So he did the only thing a rational man would ever do.

He took the stairs three at a time and locked himself in the restroom.

"So."

Zexion lifted a curious eyebrow, but kept his eyes on the road. If he totaled the car, Tifa would demand he pay it off, and the only place in this God-forsaken town willing to hire a psych-major for the summer was Chickin' Lickin'. So, despite the sudden urge to turn around and bury his nose in the soft, pale skin of his boyfriend's neck and keep it there for the next hour, he did as any reasonable man would do, and shrugged. "So?"

The blond sitting beside him sighed and leaned his head against the passenger's side window. "So," he began. Zexion's ears twitched. He could virtually hear Demyx gnawing on his lower lip. Damn. He'd bet fifty munny that it was turning all red and plump and-

"You know I like you," Demyx continued. Zexion darted a peek from the corner of his eyes.

"And you know I'm grateful that you came to pick me up. It would have sucked having to walk thirty miles back home."

Zexion sadly wondered how he'd fallen so far.

"But, Zexion, I've gotta ask you something."

Demyx sighed, turned to stare at him incredulously, and jerked his thumb out the window.

"Where the hell are we?"

Zexion opened his mouth to answer. And then he looked around, blinked, and realized anything he said would be an obvious lie. "Uh," he muttered, feeling his face go uncomfortably warm. "I can explain."


	18. Chapter 16: And it-

**Chapter Sixteen: And it-**

Current Betting Pool: Strife - 96681 munny Leonhart - 74813 munny

There is no such thing as the perfect family. The Brady Bunch is a myth, and The Partridge Family a gross inaccuracy. In real life, people argue. They scream and fight and fuck up. They shave embarrassing body parts, stuff embarrassing places, and make general fools of themselves. A mother may sometimes grow to hate a father, a sister may grow to despise her brother. Families will sometimes have running marathons: who can embarrass little Billy the most in front of his girlfriend/boyfriend/significant other? And it's alright. Because Billy, after all, is not perfect, and does not belong to a perfect family. He probably belongs to one whose levels of dysfunctionality rival only those seen on Arrested Development. And we all know there aren't many families more dysfunctional than those seen on Arrested Development.

So, life isn't perfect. People aren't perfect. Families aren't perfect. Yes, we know this.

In about five minutes, Axel, Riku, Sora, and Roxas are about to wish they didn't.

"So, what are you gonna do when we find them?" Tifa asked, peering at the short, blonde woman sitting stoically beside her. Said woman narrowed her eyes and fiddled with something in her coat (which Tifa wondered why she was wearing, it being the middle of summer and all).

"Punishment," Elena said calmly.

"Yeah, he's definitely grounded for the next week," Tifa agreed, completely missing the confused eyebrow Elena raised. "Imagine. Starting a food fight in the middle of LoD. LoD. And Leon wouldn't even tell me, the bastard. I had to find out from the one o'clock news."

"My husband and I were right in the middle of target practice when Kairi came in wailing about Axel disgracing our entire family," Elena muttered. Her voice dropped a decibel. "I'll teach the little shit to besmirch our reputation. I wonder where I left the…"

"Mm?"

"Oh, nothing," Elena said, smiling widely at her companion. "Just talking to myself. How is Ms. Rinoa?"

"Huh? Oh, I tried knocking on her door before I called you," Tifa said, voice hushed. "But there wasn't an answer. I'll bet she's sleeping, that poor woman. You know, I think she's working four jobs, now."

"Really?" Elena gasped. "And her sons don't help her?"

"They're all in school," Tifa sighed, shaking her head. "Rinoa refuses to let them work. Says it'll take time away from their studies."

"Bullshit," Elena muttered. "They're already spending all day with their video games and movies. All a job will do is teach them a bit of responsibility."

"That's what I say," Tifa said. "But you know Rinoa. She doesn't want her children to make the same mistakes she made."

The pair fell into silence for a minute, before Tifa once again spoke up. "But I hear Cloud's been doing very well for himself!" She glanced over her shoulder and flipped the turn signal, switching into the right lane. "We were talking yesterday, him and Leon and I. Working through some paperwork."

"Oh, how is the divorce coming along?"

"Ah, splendidly! It's amazing; the kids still don't suspect a thing. And Cloud said that if he can last through the Shinra deal-whatever the hell that mean-he'll pull in enough to ensure that Rinoa can drop two of her part-times!"

"Well, that's wonderful!"

"Isn't it?" Tifa said, smiling happily. "That poor woman, coming home at all hours of the night. She spends every day slaving away, trying to save enough to buy her own place. She and Cloud both; they're so hardworking. I'm so happy their workload is finally easing up a bit. They do so much for their family. It's really very inspirational."

"Amazingly so," Elena said, returning the soft smile. She turned her gaze forward, then frowned. "Oh," she said, lifting a finger to point at a spot in the distance a good quarter mile away. "Is that the boys?"

Tifa leaned forward over the wheel, squinting. "You mean the huge dog pile?"

"I think it's Riku and Roxas," Elena said curiously. "My boy looks like he's trying to pull them apart."

Tifa tilted her head. "Is Sora waving a white flag?"

A pause. "No, I think that's a tee-shirt."

"Where on Earth did they find an extra tee-shirt?"

"A corpse? I think Tseng and I might have dumped someone here a few days back. Ah, who knows?" Elena sighed. "Slow down a bit."

Tifa pressed her foot against the brake pedal, and the car cruised to a halt beside the quarrelling foursome. Sora blinked against the bright lights for a moment, then started shouting happily.

"Guys! We're saved!" He laughed, walking towards the car and trying to peer inside the tinted windows. "Oh, you're an angel of mercy-"

Slowly, Elena rolled her window down. "Hello, boys."

Sora went rigid. "Oh, Mrs. Elena!" he squeaked, squirming slightly. He inched a pace to the left, trying to block the trio of idiots from sight. "How nice to see you on this fine night."

"Isn't it?" Elena smiled. Sora, being an intelligent young man, did not for a minute trust the expression. "Sora, dear," she said, nodding at the three boys still fighting tooth and nail on the dirt behind him. "Is that my baby boy?"

The brunet laughed weakly. "Oh, you mean Axel. Ah. Yes. Err…I don't suppose you've heard-"

"-that the four of you managed to get yourselves banned from the classiest restaurant in a hundred mile radius?" she asked, chuckling. The sound sent shivers down Sora's spine. "Yes, we saw it on the one o'clock news."

"Ah," Sora said. " _That's_ what those reporters wanted."

Tifa leaned over Elena's shoulder then, smiling fit to burst. "Why don't the four of you climb into the backseat, honey. We'll drive you home."

It was at about this time that Sora realized his life sucked. "Um. I. Am not sure that's a good-"

"Now."

"Right," Sora said. He turned towards the group squabbling amongst themselves on the floor, perfectly oblivious to the fact that they'd all probably be dying soon. "Oi! Guys! Stop it!"

Roxas threw an uppercut at Riku's jaw.

"Hey!"

Riku aimed an elbow at Roxas's gut.

"You guys!"

Axel somehow found himself on the receiving end of both blows.

Tifa groaned, rolled her eyes, and honked the car. Immediately, the three boys fell apart, hands clutching each other by the shirts and fists raised. They blinked.

"Hello, boys," Elena said. She was no longer smiling. Axel choked.

"M-mom?"

"Hi, darling!" Tifa chuckled.

" _Mom?_ "

"Haha," Roxas said. "You guys are screwed."

"Don't act so cocky, Roxas," Elena said calmly. "Your mother just arrived home. We think she's sleeping. I don't envy you two the task of waking her up and explaining just why the Strife family will never be able to set foot inside _Land of Dragons_ again."

Roxas and Sora blanched.

"Haha," Axel said. "You guys are screwed."

"Axel?" Elena said, frown melting into a cheery smile that sent horrible shivers down her son's back.

"Yes, Mother?"

"Get in the car."

"Ah. Okay."

"I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive you for this," Demyx muttered, running an irritated hand through his faux-hawk. Beside him, Zexion hid a wince, instead allowing a vaguely apologetic expression to smooth across his face.

"I apologize," Zexion said, shifting the car into park and pulling his keys from the ignition. "I…seem to have a hard time with directions."

Demyx lifted an eyebrow. "There're, like, two different turns on this road."

"Four," Zexion mumbled.

"I'm just not seeing how the hell you managed to get the both of us lost when there are only four turns," Demyx continued, unbuckling his seatbelt. "You drove here, didn't you?"

"As did you."

"Correction, _we_ took a taxi. _You_ got here on your own power."

"On the way here, I didn't take any detours in an effort to find us a small restaurant still open at two a.m," he said, resisting the very real urge to bite his lip in agitation, deciding the gesture would appear a bit too much like a pout for his liking. "Which, by the way, I was doing for your sake."

"I didn't ask you to find a restaurant," Demyx argued immediately, rubbing at his cheeks.

"You're the one who wanted a late dinner."

"I wasn't sure you'd had a chance to eat, yet," Zexion said. Kind of snootily, really, what with the way he was staring down his nose at the frustrated blond slouched beside him. "What with the whole ' _getting yourself banned from every Land of Dragons in a three thousand mile radius,_ ' situation."

"Uh, dude," Demyx said disbelievingly. "That was Riku's fault."

"And as much as I agree with your decision not to bring him along, I find it hard to believe you didn't play even a small role in the food-fight fiasco."

"No, actually," Demyx said. "I was a too busy ducking and weaving around the flying egg rolls." He slouched even further in his seat, then sat up straight. "Are you trying to distract me?"

A smirk. "No."

"I think you're lying," Demyx said. "'Cause, the way I see it, this argument started because you're a direction impaired idiot who can't remember whether you turned left or right at 9th street. And all of a sudden you're saying that this is my fault."

"You're the one who called me for a ride."

"Expecting that you'd been gifted with, you know. A sense of direction."

"Well, you were incorrect, now, weren't you?" Zexion sighed. "Look, I apologize. Again. Could we please move past this?"

The blond fought a reluctant grin. "It's two in the morning, and we're in the middle of nowhere with no idea how to get back home. We have no cash, no compass, and no pillows, blankets, or night lights. And you want me to move past this."

"Night lights?"

"You know, you're not very subtle."

"And you're not very quiet," Zexion said. He rubbed a finger against his temple, then shot a glare at his companion. "Are you smiling?"

Demyx grinned, not even making an effort to hide it anymore. "Sorry," he laughed. "You're funny. I'm really not mad. " Zexion lifted an eyebrow, and Demyx bowed his head, hiding a smirk. "Well," he continued, shrugging lightly. "I never would've figured you to be the kind of person who can't even remember where the hell they parked their car at the mall."

"You learn something new every day," Zexion muttered.

"And anyway," the blond continued, unlocking his door and shoving it open. "At least you have good taste."

Zexion blinked, and followed him out of the car.

When they'd realized that there was no way in hell they'd be able to find their way back home any time soon, Zexion had doubled back and headed for a lake they'd spotted a half hour previously. He'd figured that, at the least, they'd be able to get something nice out of this night.

He'd known it would be beautiful. The moon was near-full and bright in the night sky, pale light shining across the surface of the water, shimmering like a thousand different jewels. So far away from the city, the night stars all but glowed in the dark sky, brilliant and lovely. Around them, crickets chirped and the odd owl hooted, trees rustling in the distance. And then, a meter to his right:

"Fireflies," Zexion said, almost startled as tiny flashes of yellow light began winking in and out of existence around the clearing. Five feet away, Demyx inclined his head towards him, shooting him a surprised grin.

"Lightning bugs," he corrected. "You don't get 'em in the city?"

Zexion shook his head slowly, still staring at the small lights. "No," he said, voice odd. "We…don't. I haven't seen them for…years, I suppose." He took another hesitant half-step forward, an arm raising slightly towards the spot where a tiny firefly had just blinked out of visible sight.

He didn't notice Demyx turning fully towards him, brow furrowed strangely and an odd look in his eyes. He didn't notice his mouth opening once, then closing a moment later, and didn't see the way Demyx glanced away from him, face confused. Instead, he took another step forward, then another, walking towards that spot a hundred feet in the distance, where the tiny little lightning bugs seemed to be congregating, almost mesmerized.

He'd loved them as a boy. His mother had loved them. His mother, with her beautiful hair and her blue eyes and her calm strength. She would take him by the hands and spin him around and around and around, until they were both breathless and dizzy and surrounded by a swarm of fireflies. And then they would collapse in a giggling heap. Squall-because back then he was still Squall-would be sitting on the porch and trying to hide a smile, and their father would be looking on from his seat on the sidewalk with kind, loving eyes.

He outstretched a bird-quick hand and caught a single bug. Loosely, he looped his fingers together and brought them up to his eyes. Inside, a tiny little firefly winked on and off, fluttering against the slack cage.

"You like them, don't you?" Demyx asked softly, and Zexion turned towards him, surprise bordering on shock. The odd reverie he'd found himself in dissipated, and his hands fell to his sides. The tiny bug flittered off, blinking five feet away a few scant seconds later.

"You do," Demyx said. "You…" He trailed off, lips slightly parted, eyes oddly bright. Zexion looked at him, then glanced away.

"You're cold," Demyx said.

Zexion turned to him, mouth suddenly feeling oddly motionless. "Yes."

"You are," Demyx continued. "You're really, really cold."

Zexion thought about saying something, but decided against it. Demyx was still staring at him. Zexion still had difficulty reading the expression on his face.

He wasn't sure what Demyx was talking about. Didn't know whether he brought it up because it came to mind, or because he just thought he'd mention it, or maybe because he saw Zexion standing there, in the middle of a world of fireflies, and couldn't parse the fact that someone could be horrible and still miss their mother. He didn't know.

Demyx looked at him. Zexion couldn't open his mouth.

"I like you," Demyx said. "I do."

Zexion clenched his jaw.

"I'm sorry," Demyx continued. "I know I was an idiot. It took me so long to get to this point. I don't like anyone. I don't like people. I try hard, I do, because Sora and Roxas are my brothers and they're all so full, full of everything, and the only things I care about are them and music and me, so I fake it, and I do a good job, but I don't like anyone. Half the time I barely like them. And I wanted to sleep with you. I know I joked about it, but that's all it was. You were smart, and you were sharp, and you were so lovely, and I wanted you."

He didn't feel anything. His fingers were still, his head felt entirely calm. But he was having a difficult time remembering things. In the back of his mind he kept seeing a firefly. He couldn't focus on anything else.

"I'm sorry," Demyx said. "I was an idiot. I'm sorry."

Hollow. That was probably the word he was thinking of. Like the bulk of his memories had just been stripped away. He felt hollow.

"I'm not sure why you're apologizing," he said. "I was mostly aware."

"You weren't," Demyx said. "You weren't thinking anything. I'm sorry. But I like you. I love you."

And Zexion stepped back, eyes wide, and saw Demyx smiling at him, eyes oddly bright and mouth oddly tense. He opened his mouth to speak, but Demyx was already continuing, words rushing over each other.

"I do," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I do. I'm sorry. I just realized. When I was looking at you with the lightning bugs and…and you were so cold, and so terrible, and you still looked at them like they were home. I want to be part of that. I wanted to help you be a part of that. I wanted you to make me a part of that. And I was looking at you, and I realized. I'm sorry. I can be serious for you. I love you. Don't be mad."

Zexion looked at him, and realized that he'd never said those words before. Had never even thought them. Had never stopped to consider the repercussions of their kisses, their dates, of that first meeting, or those first words, or the day in the car when he'd proposed a separation and Demyx had pleaded for another chance. He'd never thought of it.

Zexion looked at him, and swallowed down whatever the fuck was rising his his throat, and extended a hand. Demyx took it.

And around them, the fireflies flew.

The moon was high in the night sky, aiming pale beams of light through the glass panel, bathing the room a gentle lavender. The effect was quite pretty, really. Axel groaned, shifted on his bed, and wished he were in a position to enjoy it.

He glanced upward and experimentally tugged at one arm. Nope. No give. Axel rolled his eyes, thumping his head back against his pillow. There was an itch along the inside of his thigh. It was going to drive him crazy. And there was no way he'd be able to fall asleep like this.

He had to hand it to his mother. She'd really outdone herself this time. Next life around, he was going to make sure he was born into a normal family. Or a freakishly religious family. Or wolves. Anyone that wasn't a pair of ex-Turks. What had his parents been on when they'd decided to adopt children? Or when they'd assumed that a two year old would be able to accurately throw a knife? Or when they'd told him don't worry, it only hurt for the first few minutes, it just sort of got numb afterwards? What? You want a band-aid? You're the one who wanted to play with the machete!

One day, he'd be on Oprah. Or Jon Stewart. Or America's Most Wanted. And they would ask him, ' _Why, Axel? Why did you go burn down half the world?_ ' And Axel would say to them, ' _Well, Jerry. Maury. Pepper Ann. I've been living in fear my entire life. My mother started treating me to poison at the age of four in order to build up my immune system. My father bought me an Uzi at six. When other kids were playing with their go-carts, I was learning how to hijack a plane. Do not ask me why I turned out the way I did. Do not ask me why I killed them, or why I burned them, or why I slept with that woman. Ask my mother._ ' And Christina or Jon or Stephen would look at him, and they would nod in pity, and demand that the President give him a pardon.

Kairi and Reno didn't get nearly the amount of flak he did. Kairi spent her childhood playing with Barbies. Reno spent his formative years on roller skates and scooters. And Reno was the one who eventually followed their parents' footsteps. All Axel wanted in life was a bit of money. A nice house. Maybe a firework stand.

And he was the one who spent every other Sunday cleaning the stains from the living room mirrors. He shook his head wistfully. Favoritism.

He was entertaining himself with these musings (and by entertaining, I mean working himself into a fit of tears), when a small tap echoed against his window. He turned towards the pane, just in time to see Riku almost lose his precarious hold on the drainpipe. Riku grimaced and snatched at the rim of the window, lifting it open slowly. He stretched one foot outward and swung it over the ledge, then tumbled inside.

"Hey," Axel said, twisting his neck to stare at the younger boy laying sprawled on the bedroom floor, gasping for breath. "What's up?"

"When…did you guys…get Rottweilers?" Riku managed to wheeze. "Almost...tore...my leg off."

"A few months ago," the redhead said nonchalantly. "Mom heard a place down the block got burglared, so she bought the dogs for a bit of security. The guy tried to hit us up next. It was tragic. Mom made me help her heave the body into the lake."

"I believe you," Riku huffed, slowly pushing himself to his knees. He glanced at Axel. And then did a double-take.

"Dude," he said blankly. "Are you tied to the bed?"

"Handcuffed, actually," Axel said matter-of-factly, frowning at the chains. "It's my punishment for participating in a food fight at the restaurant Dad proposed to Mom at. They were pretty flaming pissed, but they managed to calm down enough to realize that sending me to sleep in the dog house would sort of be a death sentence. So Mom grabbed handcuffs from somewhere under her bed and chained me here. Look. She even gave me a jar. Just in case I need to pee during the night. It was really very nice of her. She wouldn't have done that two years ago."

"Right," Riku said, casting one more suspicious look at his friend. He climbed to his feet and sat on the edge of the bed, threading a hand through his strands of hair. "So."

Axel raised an eyebrow. "So?"

"Don't give me that shit!" Riku groaned, glaring at the reclining redhead through his fingers. "You were talking to Sora."

"So?" Axel asked offhandedly, the corner of his mouth quirking in something a bit too cruel to be amusement. "Last I heard, you didn't have sole ownership over him. Actually, last I heard, you had no ownership over him."

Riku scowled. "Don't be an idiot, Axel. You're handcuffed to a bed. Which means I can do pretty much whatever the hell I want to you."

"You're bluffing."

A snort. "Oh, look at this. A chakram. What fine craftsmanship! And what should I do with such a pretty toy?"

"Riku, I'm not quite sure I feel comfortable with you stroking me there."

"And imagine how uncomfortable you would feel if I jammed this little toy three inches deep." He gave a large, shit-eating grin, eyes closing with the force of it. "So. Sora?"

Axel glared at him, then rolled his eyes. "We weren't doing nothing," he muttered. "We were just talking."

"But how?" Riku cried, swinging the weapon around wildly in the air. Axel flinched. "One month, Axel. I've known Sora for a month. Every single one of those days has been spent trying to…to talk with him, or to make nice with him, or to be friends with him. I mean, shit, that's pretty much all I can ask for at this point! And at every twist and turn I've been thwarted, by that cocky, arrogant, egoistic son of a-"

"You know, you sound like you're describing yourself," Axel snorted. "And don't talk about my future husband that way."

"Oh, like you're not a cocky dipshit," Riku snarled. "And I'll talk about Roxas however the hell I please. He's the one who has us both at a standstill, if you hadn't noticed."

"I noticed," Axel said, quietly this time. He sighed, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. "Look, you really wanna know what Sora said to me?" He smirked. "Well, some of it anyway. Not like I'm gonna tell you the sweet nothings my baby was whispering into my ear as we…fuck!"

"Oops. My hand slipped. Pity about your leg."

"Fuck you, Riku," Axel hissed. "The band aids are in the upper drawer."

Riku blinked. "Band aids? You're gushing. As in, that might need stitches. You should probably ask your mom to un-cuff you and drive you to see a doctor. Sorry about that, didn't mean to jab so hard."

"Mom says doctors are for mortals," Axel muttered. "Gimme a band aid."

Riku stared at him for a moment, realized he'd known Axel for years and should probably be used to this by now, and fetched the band aid. "Right," he mumbled. "Sorry. But that's not the point." He sighed, carefully placing the bandage over the cut. "Sora. How did you get to Sora?"

Axel shrugged as best he could with both hands tied to the bedposts. "I didn't. Not really. We just started walking. And then we started talking. He told me a a few things."

"Like what?" Riku asked. "And do you at least have peroxide?"

"Bottom drawer. And just…things. About me. About Roxas. A bit about you."

Riku's eyes shot up, and he accidentally poured half the bottle over the gash. "What did he say about me?" he asked quickly, ignoring Axel's howl. "What?"

"Nothing much," Axel said through gritted teeth, testing the amount of slack on the cuffs. Nope. Not enough to string around Riku's reedy little neck. "We've been going about this all wrong."

The younger boy glanced up, fingers carefully wiping the excess peroxide from Axel's leg. "How so?"

Axel lifted a shoulder in a makeshift shrug. "Everything. The…trying to get their attention. The pranks. The serenades. We haven't accomplished anything. Not really."

"I don't much see what else we can do. They're the ones who started this," Riku mumbled, catching excess drops of fluid and blood with a paper towel. He carefully replaced the bandage over the cut, then capped the bottle of peroxide. "They're the ones who messed with my dogs."

"But the goal was to get them, wasn't it?" Axel asked. "This…war. It hasn't been doing us any good. We've been trying to force the issue, and…well, Roxas doesn't like that very much, does he? And if Roxas doesn't like it, then Sora will never agree. It's not working. We need a new strategy. I mean, just look at Zexion."

"Asshole," Riku muttered. "Every time he sees me, he starts laughing. Hell, not even laughing. He just makes that little superior smirk, as if he knows something I don't. Or as if he's been getting some. Jackass."

"He's still winning where we've failed. Why?"

"Well, it's not because he's better looking."

"Definitely not," Axel agreed. "So the question remains, what does he have that we don't?"

Riku remained quiet for a moment. And then he squirmed slightly. "I saw him in the shower one time. He's, ah, not bad."

Axel stared at him. "I'm not even going to tell you how sick that is. He's your brother." He paused, then grinned. "So. How big was he?"

"Pretty big," Riku admitted.

"Oh."

"Yeah. Thick, too. Which is so not fair. The bastard's shorter than I am."

"Well, you know what they say about small packages," Axel said sagely.

"Okay, we're never speaking of this again," Riku groaned. "I know you had a point, so get to it."

Axel grinned, almost reluctantly. "Right. Look. The point is that we're not gonna…woo…Sora and Roxas by doing what we've been doing. It has to start with friends first. We have to meet up with them. We have to call this thing to an end."

Riku blinked. "What, you mean forfeit?"

A nod. "Right. Forfeit. Oh, shut up. Do you want to win or not?"

"Well," Riku drawled sarcastically. "I think the point of forfeiting is that you give up your right to win. 'Cause, you know. You're forfeiting."

"You know what I mean," Axel said dryly, flexing his hands. "From the beginning, we were doing this to get them. If forfeiting the battle means winning the war, then you do what you have to do. Pride will do you no good when you're left licking your cuts and bruises."

"Whatever," Riku scowled. He closed his eyes and groaned. "Forfeit. I mean. Seriously?"

Axel looked at him. Then looked away. "Or not. Only if you think it's worth it."

Riku looked up. He opened his mouth, then let it fall. His mind was raging internally. Pride is a dangerous thing, and it had always taken an effort to allow the slightest blow to his own. And this, this game they were playing, this uneasy war between two families who probably could have been friends once upon a time...to give up...it was unthinkable. At least this way Sora was looking at him.

Sora.

Riku let himself fall back on the bed, over Axel. Through the haze of darkness, he could make out patterns in the plaster of the ceiling. Crowns and stars and keys. Inanely, he wondered if he could connect every single bump and turn it into one huge tapestry.

Sora.

"Okay," he murmured. "Alright. I'll give up."

Axel shifted uncomfortably but made no move to displace Riku from his spot on his stomach. "I know."

The younger boy sighed and slowly pushed himself to a sitting position. He leant forward, leaning his temple against his palm. "So…what? We knock on their door and just tell them we forfeit?"

"Yeah," Axel said, nodding. "That's pretty much it."

"And…" Riku wet his lips. Huh. His stomach felt odd all of a sudden. Ominous. "We tell them that we want to make nice. That we'll back off. We'll retreat, give 'em space, but... "

"Our doors'll be open. They'll come around," the handcuffed boy said confidently. "They will. But we need to take it slow. Earn their trust. Be friends." He sighed suddenly. "No more tricks. Just us."

"Just earnest friendship, huh?" Riku whispered.

"Yeah."

"You think. You think we-"

A nod. "Yeah."

"Okay." Riku closed his eyes, and breathed. His mouth twitched once, as if unsure what expression to wear. Finally, it settled into a soft, hesitant smile. "I want that. We just knock on their doors and tell them we forfeit. Simple as that."

"And the best part of it is," Axel smirked, "for once, nothing can go wrong."

In a house not very far away, a small group of villains hunched over a small, black device, faces drawn and worried. From the tiny appliance, voices echoed.

 _"And the best part of it is...for once, nothing can go wrong."_

The tape went dead, and silence fell upon the cluster of men and women. And then, from a tall man with a bright blue Mohawk-

"So Team Leonhart is just gonna give up?"

"It…looks that way, don't it?" a larger man sitting beside him muttered, frowning. "They're gonna forfeit to the little pipsqueaks." A pause. "I've got ten thousand munny on Riku and his posse."

"Twelve," the mohawked man said.

"Eight."

"Half my bank account."

"Ouch. Sucks to be you."

Pensive quiet. Finally, a tall lady with a beautiful face leant forward, rewound the tape for a second, and pressed play.

 _"And the best part of it is…for once, nothing can go wrong."_

The small group glanced around the table where they were all seated. And then they burst into simultaneous guffaws.

The sun rose slowly over high canopies, bathing the lake and clearing in a soft, gentle warmth. Rays of sunlight arced through the air, filtering into the small car and hitting the front seats. In the back, Demyx stirred. He arched, limbs stretching as far as they could go within the confines of the small car. Slowly, lazily, he blinked his eyes open. And then closed them, because strands of hair were poking into his eyeballs, and it did not make for a pleasant sensation, especially not at (he glanced at his watch) seven thirty in the morning, with evil rays of death turning the car hotter than an oven and his lower back feeling like it was about to dissolve from being forced into a position he was about two feet too tall to properly fit into.

He tilted his head backwards and moved it from side to side, feeling the muscles in his neck pull awkwardly. Lifted his feet onto the window and rotated his ankles. Tried to sit up-

-and fell back down. He blinked down at the heavy weight laying on his chest.

Zexion slept there, an arm looped loosely around Demyx's torso, legs intertwined tightly with Demyx's own.

Demyx smiled.

They'd decided on the sleeping arrangements last night, with Zexion too drained to do much of anything, and Demyx too unwilling to be separated. They had wanted to kip out under the stars. Romantic, and all that. And they probably would have done so, had they not both started itching, looked down, and realized they were covered from head to toe in mosquito bites. So instead they'd traipsed back to the car and into their respective seats. Half an hour of awkward squirming later, they'd sighed, glanced at each other, and then climbed quietly into the backseat.

That had kind of sucked, too, because they were both too tall to fit properly without their legs bumping into each other. After a bit of deliberation, Zexion had laid down, pulling Demyx atop him. Which had sucked even more because maybe Zexion was broader, but Demyx was taller, and their heads just wouldn't stop knocking. So a few groans, bumps, and bruises later, they'd shifted and rolled. And that had been okay.

Demyx grinned. Huh. Without the uncomfortably annoying and even more uncomfortably hot sneer on his face, or the harsher frown, or even the rarer, softer half-smile, Zexion looked like a kid. Like one of those little brats who fell sound asleep after an afternoon on the playground. The angles of his face looked more like curves. Demyx grin turned positively feral, and he lifted two fingers and pinched Zexion hard on the nose.

Zexion flew awake with a startled yelp and rolled off Demyx into the tiny concave between front seat and back. He groaned, sitting up and rubbing at his head. "What 'n'earth d'you do that for?" he mumbled, lifting himself back onto the seat. Demyx shifted to make room for him, turning a bright smile at the grumbling man.

"Sorry," he grinned. "You just looked so cute."

Zexion aimed a glare at him that somehow managed to look both hateful and absolutely charming. "I looked what?"

"You heard me," Demyx snickered. "You looked like a baby. For your pride, I had to wake you up." Zexion fought a flush, scowling. Demyx laughed, latching his arms around Zexion and biting at his earlobe. "You still do! You look so cute!"

"How did I know you would be a morning person?" Zexion muttered.

"How did I know you wouldn't be?" Demyx retorted. He stretched, lifting his arms up as high as they would before they hit the roof. "Don't worry. I'll mellow out in a bit."

"Until then, I'd appreciate it if you shut up," Zexion muttered. "You're giving me a headache."

Demyx closed his mouth with a loud clack, but kept grinning. "Sorry," he said, though the grin told Zexion he was obviously lying. "I'll shut up." He leant forward, placing another bite on Zexion's lobe.

Zexion sighed, closing his eyes. "Or you could continue doing that."

"What?" Demyx asked, mouth hot on Zexion's neck. "This?"

"You're such an idiot," Zexion groaned, and shifted in his seat to capture Demyx's mouth in his own. And after that it was just breathy sighs and wet lips and tongues working against each other, rubbing and stroking together in something that was not rhythm, was too awkward for rhythm, but was nice anyway.

"Okay," Demyx whispered when they finally pulled away from each other. "I'm okay now. I'll be quiet."

Zexion snorted, and wiped his mouth. "Front seat," he said. "We'll try to go home."

"Right," Demyx laughed. " _Try._ "

"At least we're still in the same country."

Demyx sighed exaggeratedly and tied his seat belt. "How long do you think it takes them before they notice we're missing?"

"With my luck, Mother will assume we ran away and chase us to the end of the world."

"At least yours will come after you," Demyx mumbled. "Mine will think we're on our honeymoon, and will figure we need our space for a few weeks."

"Perfect," Zexion said. He buckled his seat belt and slid the car into reverse. Slowly, he turned the car towards the main road, and reached for the turn signal. And then he paused.

"Right or left?"

Demyx narrowed his eyes. "Excuse me?"

Zexion winced, and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I mean," he muttered slowly, choosing his words with the utmost care and knowing full well all the care in the world would do him absolutely no good. "You don't by any chance remember which way we were going before we decided to drive to the lake?"

"Okay," Riku said, threading an uneasy hand through his hair. "What was the plan again?"

He and Axel were walking down the street, morning sunlight blasting down into their eyes. Riku had slept over the night before, figuring it would be easier to brave Tifa's anger re: his defiance of house-arrest than to try and make it past the Rottweilers without Elena's help. And now, an un-handcuffed Axel and a groggy Riku were strolling across town, mentally psyching themselves for the encounter they were about to willingly provoke.

"The point, Riku, is that there's not supposed to be a plan." Axel sighed, scratching at the side of his nose. He tucked his green tee into the waist of his pants. "We're just supposed to walk over there and be spontaneous."

"Dude. Do you remember what happened the last time we were spontaneous?" the younger boy hissed. Axel lifted an eyebrow, then snorted.

"Ah," he nodded. "Right. How could I forget about Lightning?"

"Ms. Lightning," Riku corrected furiously. "I couldn't show my face at school for weeks."

"One week," Axel said. "But you have a point. Spontaneity is going to get us nowhere. We need a plan. Or a script. Note cards, maybe."

"Or we could just say that we're sorry."

"Good. You say we're sorry, and I'll say that we forfeit."

"And then I'll say that we were…" The sound of grinding teeth. Obviously, last night's quiet introspection had been made moot by the realization that Tifa was going to slaughter him when she figured out that he wasn't in his room. "Wrong."

"You can't say it in that tone of voice. We have to believe it. We were wrong."

"Okay. We were wrong. They were right. Then you can say that we've been complete and total jackasses-"

"-and that we apologize for everything we've been doing-"

"-that we'll back away, if they want us to. We'll never bother them again-"

"-but that we really do want to be friends. That we like them. A lot. That we messed up, but it was with the best intentions. That all we wanted was to…be with them."

"And then we leave?"

"And then we leave."

Riku clapped his hands together, crowing triumphantly. "And then the little fuckers will be so overcome with remorse that they'll be practically forced to try and make nice with us! Cue friendship, romancing, and screwing on the hood of Zexion's car! It's fool-proof!"

Axel shot him a glare. Riku grinned. "Sorry. Old habits." He sighed, tilting his face up to the sky. The sun blazed in the corner of his eyes, and he closed them against the glare. "It's Sora, you know?"

"Yeah," Axel muttered. He swiped a hand through his spikes of hair. "I know."

Riku turned towards him, his smile easing slightly. "You really do like him. Don't you?"

Axel shrugged, rolling his eyes towards the houses across the road. "I guess," he mumbled.

Riku grinned, but there was no real humor in the gesture. "Which, in Axel-speak means 'I'm hopelessly in love with the brat and want to bear his children.'"

"You're a dick," Axel snorted. "And I wouldn't talk, pretty-boy. You slept over at my house yesterday."

"So?"

"So I wasn't the one moaning in my sleep, goin' ' _Oh Sora, give it to me harder!'_ "

Riku squawked, his face doing a fine impersonation of the colors of the rainbow. "I don't talk in my sleep."

"But you're not denying the ' _give it to me harder,_ '" Axel laughed.

Riku probably would have answered. But their houses had risen up before them, closer than Riku would have thought, and with one final inspirational glance at the sky, the two walked up the Strife family driveway and knocked on the door.

For a single breathless moment, there was no response. And then a loud ' _I'll get it!_ ' sounded from inside the house, and quick footsteps began increasing in volume. A lock clicked, and the door swung open.

"Mom's gonna kill you-" Sora cried happily, grinning up at the two boys staring down at him. And then he blinked and took a step back.

"Oh," he said. He opened his mouth, eyes darting from Axel to Riku, before settling on Axel. "Oh. Hi. What did you need?"

"We want to talk to you," Riku said. "You and Roxas."

Sora's lips pulled down. "I," he said, a hand pressed to his stomach. "I…don't know-"

"Sora," Axel said. "Trust me."

Sora looked at him for the longest moment. Riku clenched his teeth together, wanting to say anything to draw Sora's attention back to himself, anything to make Sora look him in the eye. Instead, he stayed quiet, and Sora finally nodded.

"Roxas!" he cried, inclining his head towards the inside of the house. "Come over here a second!"

There was a small crash, a muffled curse, and then a: "What do you want?"

"Just get over here!"

Another curse, this time louder, and footsteps began drawing nearer. Beside him, Riku could hear Axel suck in his breath; not deeply, just enough to signify some change in temperament.

"Is it Demy-?" Roxas began, then fell quiet. He turned from Axel to Riku, then back to Axel, mouth opening and closing for a moment, eyes narrowing in confusion.

And then he snatched Sora back and tried to slam the door shut.

Riku groaned in indignation and shoved his foot between the door and the post, jarring it open. Roxas glowered at him.

"Go away."

"We want to talk to you," Axel said. "Both of you."

Roxas slammed the door harder against Riku's foot. Axel sighed. "Please?" he asked over the sound of Riku's curses.

The blond opened his mouth-no doubt to shout something angry and scathing-but Sora grabbed hold of the doorknob and shoved it open. Roxas turned to stare at him in shock.

"He said please," Sora said, gaze averted. "Let's just listen."

Roxas glared at him, eyes narrowing viciously in his face, but he jerked his eyes away and nodded reluctantly. Axel didn't even bother waiting for Riku to stop rubbing woefully at his foot. "We're sorry," he said. He shrugged, ignoring the way Riku paused in his rubbing and hunched in on himself, the way something in Sora's face eased. Even the way the pupils of Roxas's eyes contracted slightly in shock. Ignored it and tried to focus on whatever the hell he needed to say.

"We are," he continued. "Everything we've been doing has been stupid. The pranks and the…the chocobos, and the food fight and...and just everything. We had no reason to retaliate, after what you did to the Dalmatians. Whether we meant to or not, we're the ones who started everything." He coughed. "Okay, that's a lie. Riku's the one who started everything."

Roxas and Sora turned towards him, one pair of eyes wary, the other curious. Riku grit his teeth angrily, shoulders bunching, mouth opening in an instinctive urge to lash out against the cause for his embarrassment. And then the tension fled from his body, and he sighed.

"Yeah," he murmured. "He's right. I didn't do it on purpose, you know. But it happened, and I'm sorry."

Roxas looked about ready to say something, but Sora grabbed at his forearm and jerked it. His mouth snapped shut.

"But look," Riku continued, agitatedly switching his weight from one foot to the other. "Maybe what we did was wrong. Okay, no maybes. But…it's not like we did it to be…mean. We weren't on a sadomasochistic trip. We just wanted…" He sighed, and took a step forward. His eyes found Sora's, and he did not look away.

"I just wanted you, okay?" he said softly. "And…okay, I get that you don't like me like that. But…I wanted to try. And maybe the two of us were idiots about it, but…we just…wanted. And…you can hate me for what I did, but…" He finally looked down, shrugging. "But can you please not hate me for that?"

He glanced up again, and Sora was staring at him. Still staring at him, eyes wide and blue and absolutely unreadable. But it was more than nothing, and Riku's mouth widened in something that wasn't a smile, not quite, but it was a lot closer than it had been in a while. "I like you," he said. Simply. "And I can't ask you for anything more. But I still live next door. And if you ever want to come over for a game of football or Tekken or something, I'll answer. It would be fun."

"Unless it's the school year," Axel amended, "In which case pretty-boy and I have classes in the mornings and afternoons, and you little brats should be in school."

"Unless," Riku agreed. He turned back to Sora. His eyes were still so blue. "So yeah," he said. "That's all I really wanted to say."

He turned and started walking away. He could hear Axel mutter a quiet goodbye to both boys and continue after him, and he closed his eyes. He didn't know what would happen after this, what their decision would be, but something in his gut was telling him this was the right thing to do. And when he heard the quick, muffled tones of conversation behind him, complete with curses and accusations and pleas, he realized he was right.

"Hey!" Sora called. Riku and Axel turned, and Sora smiled tentatively at them. It was Roxas, however, who reluctantly walked forward, coming to a halt before the two older boys. His eyes flitted between them, lingering on Axel for a moment too long to be equal, but they finally came to a rest on Riku.

"You mean that?" he asked finally, eyes flickering from Riku's to a spot over the boy's shoulder. "You…" He lowered his voice. "You like him that much? I mean, seriously?"

Riku looked at him. "I do," he said.

Roxas stared at him, glanced back at Axel, and finally shrugged.

"All right, I guess," he said. "If you want to. Sora says…" he paused, tapping the toe of his foot uneasily on the ground. "You can…try, I guess. You…you won't be able to, probably. But…well, you can try."

If Riku had been a lesser man, he'd have sagged in relief. As it was, he merely nodded calmly and prepared to turn on his heel. Axel, however, smirked widely and held his hand out towards the blond.

"So," said, grin widening until it almost reached the sides of his face. "Friends?"

Roxas stared at him, then glanced back down. And slowly, hesitatingly, his hand began inching up.

And then the cacophonic screech of a sound system shot through the air at a volume that surely exceeded that of a nuclear launch , and all four boys shouted, grabbing at their ears.

"What is that?" Sora yelled, running up to his brother. Roxas shook his head, staring wildly around. And then the shrieking came to an abrupt stop, and instead voices began to drift out. Familiar voices. Very familiar voices.

 _"Or we could just say that we're sorry."_

 _"Good. You say we're sorry, and I'll say that we forfeit."_

Roxas blinked. Sora blinked. Axel and Riku blinked.

"Is that…" Sora began, wetting his lips nervously. The two older boys turned to stare at each other, their eyes large.

"Oh my God, someone bugged us," Riku said blankly. He began patting himself down, fingers trying to find the little mechanic appliance. "Someone actually bugged us!"

 _"And then I'll say that we were…"_ The sound of grinding teeth. _"Wrong."_

 _"You can't say it in that tone of voice. We have to believe it. We were wrong."_

Roxas turned to stare at Axel, eyes unbearably wide and shocked. He took a step backward.

"Oi, Roxas, we can explain," Axel said nervously, patting at his pockets. "We were just trying to rehearse. We would have messed up otherwise. That's just a…a recording."

 _"And then we leave?"_

 _"And then we leave."_

"Really," Roxas hissed slowly. "'Cause it sounds to me like the voice of God."

"Now, Roxas," Axel said, almost frantically. "We didn't mean it like that, we just didn't want to screw-"

 _"And then the little fuckers-"_

A few passing parents gasped in dismay and clapped their hands over their children's ears.

 _"-will be so overcome with remorse that they'll be practically forced to try and make nice with us! Cue friendship, romancing, and screwing on the hood of Zexion's car! It's fool-proof!"_

Silence. And then, as one, every single person on the street turned to stare at Riku and Axel.

"But…" Riku said agitatedly, glaring around. "No. That's not all we...Just listen, we said more, that was just habit, it was just-"

The sound system screeched, warped, and went dead.

Again, silence. All heads once again turned to stare at Riku and Axel. Except, of course, for the two they most wanted to see.

"Sora?" Riku said tentatively. The brunet shook his head wildly, staring at the ground. Finally, he shrugged, the movement lopsided and all the answer Riku needed. With that, he turned and walked back inside.

"No, Sora," Riku continued, starting forward. And then a hand pushed furiously against his chest and sent him stumbling backward.

"No," Roxas grit from between clenched teeth. "No. You keep away from him."

"Roxas-"

"Shut up!" he hollered, swinging an angry fist at the redhead who'd spoken. "I actually almost-" He paused, then yelled furiously up at the sky, thrusting an angry hand outwards almost as if he expected some blade to magically materialize there. And with one more frustrated shout, he stalked back inside and slammed the door shut behind him.

Silence. And more silence, as the accusing glares from the neighbors began to dissipate as they all slowly retreated back inside their homes. Finally, only Riku and Axel were left there, staring at the closed door.

Silence. And then:

"Fuck!" Riku suddenly shrieked, pulling at his hair. Axel jumped in surprise, turning to stare at his friend.

"Why!" Riku screeched. "Why do you do this to me?!"

"Oi, Riku?"

"Put me out of my misery!"

"Hey, calm down. Riku?"

"Strike me where I fucking stand!"

"Shit," Axel murmured, his voice wavering. "I think he's finally cracked."

The subsequent 'Aaaaaaarrrggghhhhhhhh!', head-butt, and sprint down the street, Riku still screeching at the top of his lungs, did nothing to refute this belief.

On the roof of the house situated directly across the street, two men carefully removed a huge megaphone from where it was hidden between the roof's cable antenna and a stack of Frisbees. They slowly climbed down the ladder leaning against the side of the building and landed lightly on the ground, overgrown roots and weeds swallowing their feet. And then they gave each other high fives, patted their wallets tenderly, and disappeared.

A few feet away, inside the very house said men had just retreated from, a small group of men and women stood gathered around a living room window, gaping at the spectacle one young boy was making of himself as he ran down the street.

"Goodness, I think we've broken him," one woman said, almost in awe.

A large man standing beside her nodded. "Reckon the blow was a bit too much for the little Leonhart boy. And he was so close, too."

Behind them, a third man sighed to himself. "Y'know," he said slowly, shaking his head in a sad sort of sympathy. "Sometimes, I almost feel bad for what we do for the sake of money."

Every person in that room glanced at each other, faces oddly drawn. And then they snorted.

"Al-most!"

And with that, they disappeared into the kitchen.


	19. Chapter 17: All comes-

**Chapter Seventeen: All comes-**

Kairi was a proper young lady. She knitted, she sang, she played the piano and did the laundry and washed the floors, all with a smile and a song. She also liked hollering ballads at people's windows at disreputable hours of the morning and ripping the hem of her skirts on broken seashells, but that and ladyhood (like, really, what the fuck even was ladyhood?) wasn't mutually exclusive. The point of the matter is, Kairi was a proper young lady. Respectable, kind, committed to community service and environmental policy.

This explains why she spent every Monday afternoon at Maleficent's house, helping her with her experiments. The lady was somewhat reckless, after all: if she wanted to breed roses and flytraps together and call them grand experiments, it was only right that Kairi stay by her side to make sure she didn't unintentionally harm herself.

Today was a gardening day. Maleficent, for all that she was somewhat uncomfortably prone to fits of evil laughter, was quite a talented gardener. She liked plants. Sure, the only ones she really owned were poisonous and angry and quite possibly in possession of brains, but again, that wasn't the point. Anyway, the plants liked Kairi. If they were at all mobile, it would not be an exaggeration to say that they'd probably spend every Monday afternoon following her around like little puppy dogs. Just between you and me, it's only because they thought she'd taste go well with the blood and guts Maleficent fed them every day at midnight, but we'll let Kairi entertain her pretensions towards grand gardening skills for now.

On this particular Monday afternoon, Maleficent was sitting at her ornate lawn chair, a cell phone cradled in her hand. She was more animated than usual. Just the sight of her pasty purple lips turned up in a grin brought a smile to Kairi's face. Such a sweet woman; Kairi had no idea what Roxas meant every time he called her a dirty, vicious hag.

She putted happily around the garden, carefully watering each of the plants and ducking under the tentacles they waved at her. Behind her, Maleficent laughed, saying something about gambling and bets and gathering round for another game tonight.

Kairi smiled. Maleficent did love her Bingo.

Finally, she finished watering the last of the myriad plants littering Maleficent's huge greenhouse, and dusted her hands off.

"I'm done, Aunt Maleficent," she said, shouldering her purse. "Is there anything else you'd like me to do?"

Maleficent murmured something to her friend on the phone, and then covered the receiver. "Not a thing, dear," she smiled. "You've done more than enough."

"Great," Kairi said, smiling back. She turned to walk out the door, when Maleficent suddenly called for her.

"Oh, goodness. Dear?"

Kairi paused, turning back. "Yes, ma'am?"

Maleficent's smile widened, and she extended a closed hand towards the small redhead. "You left your cell phone on the counter," she said, opening her hand and proffering the small black cellular. "Wouldn't want you to forget it, would we?"

Kairi gave a relieved laugh, and walked forward, taking the offered phone from Maleficent's thin hand. "Thanks, Aunt Maleficent. I never would have noticed."

"Of course, dear," Maleficent said. She lifted the phone back to her ear, then paused.

"Oh, and Kairi? Do say hello to your friends for me."

Cloud loved Zack and Aerith. Cloud loved Zack and Aerith very much. He was quite sure he'd never have put up with them otherwise. A guy half drowns you in a baby pool at the tender age of three, his little girlfriend giggling fit to burst beside him, and you're still vegging out on the couch together twenty years later? It had to be love.

We here join Cloud, Zack, and Aerith, as they veg out on the couch. And by 'veg,' I actually mean 'sit around awkwardly, because half-proposals and the bitter memory of last night's food fight at the classiest restaurant this side of _Lumiere's_ sort of kills all sense of comfort between friends, especially when one of those friends is the older cousin of the assholes who started said food fight in the first place.'

"So," Cloud said, twiddling his thumbs together. "Any reason you're here?"

To his right, Zack laughed. The sound cracked a glass somewhere. "What, a guy needs an excuse to hang out with his best buddy?"

"Yes," Cloud said. "Yes, he does."

"I just wanted to hang."

"And by I," Aerith said stiffly, "Zack means we."

"Cloud," Zack said, grin still in place. "Would you please tell Aerith that I decided to visit my best friend all on my lonesome, and she tagged along just to make sure we weren't talking about her behind her back?"

"She's right there," Cloud muttered, pointing to his left. "You can tell her yourself."

"Cloud," Aerith responded, ignoring him completely and smiling like a serial killer. "Would you mind telling Zack that the only reason I decided to come here was to visit my closest friend in his time of need, and not, as he so quaintly puts it, in a misguided attempt to ensure your loyalty to me."

"I'm actually pretty cool," Cloud said. "I'm not feeling particularly needful."

"Nonsense."

"Yeah, right."

Aerith and Zack decidedly did not glare at each other. They did, however, wish horrible things upon each other's persons.

"I don't even know why you guys are mad at each other," Cloud muttered.

"Mad?" Zack asked, face frozen in a grin. "Who said we were mad?"

"Honestly, Cloud," Aerith said, her smile so wide it sort of looked less like a smile and more like an expanse of vicious shark teeth. "Where do you get these ideas?"

Cloud stared at the ground in front of him, and decided not to argue. "I don't know."

"You're quite right," Aerith said primly. "Now. How have you been, Cloud? We haven't seen you in ages."

Zack snorted under his breath. "That's because you were so busy flower shopping for The Wedding That Will Never Occur-"

"I've been fine," Cloud interrupted, just a little hysterically. "Fine! Leon is fine. I'm fine. We're fine."

"That's good," Aerith said kindly, a vicious tic spasming her right eye. "We've all been pulling for you from the beginning. We want you happy, no matter whether it's by yourself or with someone else. And he's a very good man."

Cloud blinked, and looked down. "Yeah," he said. "He is. He…" He paused, eyebrows furrowing. On his lap, his fingers pulled at the fabric of his slacks, somehow both relaxed and filled with an odd sort of solemnity. "He's been great," he said. "This last month. He's…weird, yeah? I'm so used to everyone always pushing me. I'm so used to everyone always shoving me along this road, trying to herd me to where I want to go, you know? And…he doesn't. He doesn't expect anything more from me than what I give him. He just likes me for me. That's…that's special."

He shook his head then, hunching over slightly. "But…I mean, I wouldn't mind if he pushed me a bit, I think. If nothing pushes you, how can you ever expect to change? I never…I never would have gotten to this place in my life without my friends pushing me. Do you think he should be? Should he be pushing me?" He bit his lip.

"But I like it that he doesn't always. I mean…it's like, he's leading me by the hand or something. Which is a weird way to put it, but it's like he's making me move without actually pushing. Like he asks me for what he knows I can give, but no more. It's comfortable. It's…good," He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.

"I think I might want to-"

"THAT'S IT. I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE."

Cloud jerked, turning to stare at Zack, who had shot to his feet and was now pointing a furious finger at his girlfriend. The finger quivered, and Zack shouted.

"JUST MARRY ME ALREADY, YOU DICK."

Aerith stared calmly at the floor, face stony. "You're the one who started blaming me last night for what happened. I was perfectly ready to accept your proposal, wonton-covered coif aside."

"IT WAS YOUR FAULT! IF YOU'D JUST AGREED TO HAVE DINNER AT _LUMIERE'S_ LIKE I ASKED-"

"I hate French food! I mention it every other day!"

"I was pouring my heart out," Cloud said miserably, drawing curly patterns on the couch cushions. "I was just going to admit I wanted into his pants."

"IT'S HALF AS EXPENSIVE."

"That's a big deal for me," Cloud continued. "I haven't slept with anyone in, like, years."

"It was going to be our engagement night and you were worried about munny?!"

"I AM A POOR GRADUATE STUDENT YOU RIDICULOUS-"

"I want a float," Cloud decided. "That's what I want. I want a vanilla float. Ben and Jerry have always been there for me. Even when my two best friends betray me and start arguing their lives away on my living room couch, if there's one thing I can count on, it's vanilla floats. Is that okay with you two?"

Zack and Aerith, who were busy arguing their lives away on Cloud's living room couch, did not answer. Cloud sighed, stood, and walked into the kitchen.

He rifled through the (predictably) empty cabinets, looting around for any bowls that hadn't yet fallen victim to the Strife-Leonhart war, and sighed. Perfect. Even his kitchen was turning against him. Sullenly, he grabbed a dirty bowl of the table (and vowed never to take Demyx for granted again, because without him, the house was turning into a sty), and walked to the sink. He grabbed a sponge and turned on the spray, absentmindedly staring out the open window situated above the basin.

On his front porch fifty feet away, Leon sat, playing with a Dalmatian.

Cloud smiled. Well. Speak of the devil.

He poured a dollop of soap onto the sponge, slowly running it over the bowl, still staring idly out the window.

He hadn't been exaggerating about what he'd said earlier. The past month had been a study in being content. He couldn't remember the last time he'd ever felt so happy just stepping out the door. He definitely couldn't remember the last time seeing someone's face was all it took to make his lips turn up.

Well, he could, but that was in the past now. And slowly, slowly-

Leon took the puppy within his hands and tossed it up, catching the yipping little thing as it fell back into his arms and grinning. Cloud felt his lips pulling up in sympathetic emotion.

Cloud couldn't place him. He was distant. He was kind. He was eager, and patient, and willing. He was…so much. Cloud wasn't sure how to handle it, and wasn't sure he could afford not to.

Cloud was pretty sure he was falling in love with him.

And the gravity of that thought struck him like a blow to the chest. He went stumbling back, dropping the bowl into the sink and half tripping over his feet. The crash echoed through the open window, and Leon looked up.

Their eyes met.

For a moment, Cloud wanted to turn away.

But then Leon was climbing to his feet, walking towards him, and the confusion melted away like snow on a spring's day. He tried to force a frown. They'd once felt so comfortable to him. Instead, his mouth was quirking in involuntary pleasure, and he couldn't summon up the effort to feel nervous.

This wasn't so bad. It wasn't bad.

Leon came to a stop before him, and rested his forearms on the window sill, bending at the waist to look inside. Cloud took a half-unconscious step forward, pressing as far forward as he could, hardly noticing the way the edge of the sink dug into his stomach. Leon smiled.

"Hey."

Cloud's lips turned up almost despite themselves. "Hey."

Leon raised an amused eyebrow, as if in response to the oddly pleased way Cloud's mouth was twitching. He leaned forward further onto his elbows, smiling slightly. "How have you been holding up?"

Cloud shrugged, and let his fingers splay across the kitchen counter, happily ignoring the pile of dishes. "It's been all right. Rinoa quit one of her jobs. Roxas and Sora have been holed up in their room since yesterday. I think my cousin and your brother have eloped."

"Tifa's distraught," Leon said seriously. "She's wondering why they couldn't have just had the wedding at home."

"They were probably afraid she'd try to pick out a dress."

"Smart, that. I have it on good authority she's been eyeing bridal magazines for years now."

"Good authority?"

"They're hidden under the bed."

Cloud snorted, rolling his eyes. He glanced down at the faucet, grabbing the sponge and soaking it in water and liquid soap. "And you?" he asked, scrubbing at the grease on a pan. "How's your side?"

Leon frowned, and did not immediately answer. He pushed off the windowsill and turned, leaning back against the jut of the wood. The soft wind fluttered his hair around his ears, and he looked so much like a sculpture at that moment Cloud kind of wanted to stop breathing.

"Your hair's messy," Cloud said, suddenly uncomfortable and awkward and desperately wanting to dispel the quiet that had settled over them. He outstretched a hand, trying to smooth the tangled strands. "It's. Look, I'll get you a comb, just-"

"It's fine," Leon said, his voice muffled. He shrugged, leaning his head back cautiously further into Cloud's hands. "Don't bother."

They stood there for a moment, quiet, before Leon sighed.

"There's something seriously wrong with Riku."

Cloud tried for a quirk of the lips, and failed miserably. "You mean outside of the usual teenage angst?"

"Outside of the usual teenage angst." He settled back into silence for a moment, and Cloud very carefully did not pull on the hair threaded through his fingers. Leon's shoulders looked tense, he realized idly. He wondered if it wouldn't be terribly forward if here to invite him in for a massage.

"You said Sora and Roxas have been locked in their rooms since yesterday?"

Cloud blinked, realizing only belatedly that the question had been directed at him. "Oh. Yeah. They were fine in the morning, before I left for work. But when I came back, they were…upset. Dinner's been bad enough since Demyx disappeared. Now we've got to worry about them biting our heads off on top of purple sentient cinnamon rolls."

"That bad?"

"Terrible. I was throwing up all night."

Leon grinned. "I meant the boys."

"Oh," Cloud said. "Yeah. It's been bad. They were up half the night just arguing. Their door was locked. Leon, lean back a little, it's hard to reach you over the sink."

Leon slanted back, quiet. Then: "Riku blew up at Tifa yesterday."

Cloud's hands froze on a knot. "He what?"

The other man shifted uncomfortably, his back tensing even further. "She's been worried. She tries not to show it much, because he's a grown boy, and she wants him to have the freedom to make his own choices. But she thought things were starting to get too serious, so she asked him to make up with your cousins."

"I bet he didn't like that."

Leon shrugged uncomfortably. "He started laughing. Then screaming. He hasn't done that since the very beginning. Tifa was…upset."

"She should be," Cloud said quietly.

Silence descended upon them, before Leon grunted, tilting his head further back into Cloud's hands. "Whatever. Don't talk to me about them. They're all dumbasses."

"You're the one who started it," Cloud said idly.

"I did not."

"How are you holding up," Cloud said. "There's something seriously wrong with Riku. Admit it. You worry about your family."

"Do not," Leon said. He took a hold of one blond spike and tugged, ignoring Cloud's half-pained, half-ridiculously-amused yelps. He frowned in faux-irritation, trying to mask the way his breath sped at the distance (or lack thereof) between them.

Cloud's eyes hooded, and he glanced down at Leon's lips. "What," he whispered, wetting his mouth with a quick, nervous tongue. "You're gonna kiss me?"

"Pretty much," Leon said, and sealed their lips together.

Immediately, Cloud's mouth was open, his tongue sweeping out to tease Leon's into his mouth. He tugged Leon's lower lip between his teeth and bit at it gently, his crotch tightening at the hoarse moan Leon released. The fingers that had been clutching his hair loosened, coming around to press Cloud's face closer, dragging him as close as the counter and window would allow. Cloud groaned breathily, grinding his hips against the kitchen counter as Leon sucked on his tongue as if he would die without it in his mouth. His cock was pressing against the seam of the counter and Leon was kissing him like he was the first thing he'd tasted in years and he was going to come right there, right in the middle of the kitchen with his pants still on and Leon's tongue down his throat and-

Crash. "Harder!"

-and his two best friends quite possibly having sex not twenty feet away.

Leon closed his eyes, taking a step back and rubbing at his temple. "Of course there's a crash. There's always a crash. Why would I even bother to think I might get lucky this time?"

"Because we're both secretly optimists," Cloud muttered, surreptitiously adjusting his pants and waving a sorrowful farewell to his flagging erection. "Come inside. There's no way in hell I'm letting them break my couch, and I'm sure as fuck not going in there alone."

Leon mumbled something under his breath, but heaved himself into the window, carefully doing his best not to accidentally break any of the dishes overflowing the sink. He hopped down off the counter, and dusted himself off. Cloud lifted an eyebrow.

"I meant through the door."

"Your door is through the living room," Leon muttered. "Which is where I'm assuming Zack and Aerith are screwing like bunnies. I'm not braving that by myself, either."

"Point," Cloud said, and dragged him into the living room.

To their credit, Zack and Aerith still had their clothes on. But their hands were unaccounted for, and Cloud was super done.

"You two are leaving now," he said.

"Come now, Spike," Zack said, furtively buttoning up his jeans. "Is that any way to talk to your best friend?"

"Yes," Cloud answered. "And if I have to wash those cushions, I'm not going to your wedding."

"Which will be in June, by the way," Aerith said. The smile on her face was very much at odds with the way she was adjusting her bra. "We'll go shopping for tuxedoes next weekend."

"Oh God," Cloud said, staring at his couch in horror. "That's a stain."

"Wrong," Zack said, climbing to his feet and offering a gentlemanly hand to Aerith. "The word you're looking for is _congratulations._ "

"Congratulations," Cloud said. "That's a stain, and I'm not coming to your reception."

"I thought it was the whole wedding," Leon muttered. Everyone present ignored him.

"We'll see you next weekend, Cloud," Aerith smiled, her pretty face still flushed. "I'll call you!"

And with that, they walked out the door, hand in hand.

Behind them, Cloud stared forlornly at his couch. "I'm going to have to give that away now."

"I'll help you cart it out."

They fell quiet for a moment, each still staring at the questionably virtuous sofa. Then Cloud coughed awkwardly.

"Hey."

Leon shifted, just as awkward. "Hey."

"So."

Another cough. "So?"

Cloud ran a carefully calm hand through his hair, and decidedly did not meet Leon's eyes. "Before I do."

Silence.

And then Leon groaned, shoved Cloud onto the couch, and crawled in after him.

Riku sat on his bed, carefully sorting his laundry by colors and whites. On the small desk lying between the bed and the wall, a small radio played some rock song or another. Bitter guitar riffs drifted through the air, and he gnawed at his lower lip in time with the beats.

His door opened quietly, and Axel stepped in. He knocked belatedly, and nodded. "Hey."

"Oh," Riku said, sparing half a glance up at his best friend. "Hey. What's up?"

Axel shrugged, leaning against the wall and staring at Riku with narrowed eyes. "The heat."

"Funny," Riku said. "Shut up or get out."

"Not likely," Axel drawled. He swung a leg over Riku's desk chair, leaning forward against the back of it. "We need to talk."

Riku laughed again, and placed a blue sock with the whites. He didn't notice. "About what?"

"About how you're screwing up your laundry," Axel said, jerking his head at the door. "About what happened yesterday, dumbass. Drop the act."

The smile fell off Riku's face so quickly it was easy to wonder if it had ever been there in the first place. "There's nothing to talk about," Riku said. Axel scoffed, tossing his hair over one shoulder and crossing his arms.

"Like hell there's not. Someone's screwing with us, and I want to know who."

Another laugh. This one couldn't even be mistaken for a sincere one, so vicious did it sound. "Tell me when you find out," Riku said, grinning. "I'm going to kill them."

"I'm not telling you jack shit," Axel said. "We're doing it together."

"Sure," Riku said, grin widening savagely. "Whatever. We'll find out, I'll beat 'em up, and then we can go back to living our lives. Sure. Tell me when you want to go investigating. Hell, we can do it right now if you want. Let's go, Axel. Let's find out right now."

Axel stared at him, eyes the slightest bit wider than they should have been. "You're drunk."

Riku laughed at that, pushing his hair out of his eyes. "You need to be drinking to be drunk, bastard," he grinned. "I'm not drunk. I just want to kill someone."

Axel shrugged nonchalantly, but his eyes were thin as slits in his face. "And then?"

"Then what? I told you. We go back to living our lives. What's so hard to understand about that?"

"I don't know," Axel said casually. "I guess I don't understand where Sora fits into that."

Riku froze. Socks went tumbling out of his hands. Slowly, he bent to pick them up. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know damn well what I'm talking about," Axel hissed. "It's a simple equation. You're in love with a kid who hates your guts. We're going to go out and find the people who ruined this for us. Then you get to go back and make nice, and he forgives you, and we get to go on with our lives."

Riku laughed, long and hard. Just as quickly as they began, the sounds stopped, and Riku lifted his head, staring Axel in the face for the first time since he'd walked into the door. His eyes were bloodshot, the pupils tiny pinpricks in a sea of green. His face was utterly devoid of color. He looked like the dead.

"Sora," he said finally, "is never going to forgive me."

Axel very carefully did not clench his fists. "Of course he will," he said. "The kid's reasonable. If we show him, he'll understand."

"Roxas," Riku continued, as if he hadn't heard a word Axel had said, "is never going to forgive you."

Axel climbed to his feet, his face twisting. "Riku. Shut up."

"And you know what?" Riku said, voice light and breathy and sounding so close to hysteria Axel almost wanted to freeze. "You know what? I don't fucking care."

Axel felt something in the pit of his stomach curl. It took the effort of giants, it seemed, to raise an eyebrow in something that was more worry than derision. "Oh?"

"Oh," Riku snarled, that strange headiness gone to be replaced only by carefully reined-in anger. "I don't care. I don't care anymore. I give up."

Axel closed his eyes, if only to gain a second to think. Then he opened them. "I don't believe you."

And just like that, the dam holding in Riku's anger broke.

"I don't care!" he shouted, the sound blasting off the windows. He swept a furious hand outward, throwing the clothes littering his bed onto the floor in crumpled piles. "I don't care anymore! Sora can just go ahead and-"

"Shut up!" Axel said, suddenly as irate as Riku. He strode forward and shoved his best friend against the wall. "You're really going to throw all of this away? Like fuck, asshole! We've come too far to let this go! I have come too far to give him up now."

Riku shoved him back, sending Axel stumbling. He didn't give him a chance to fall to the floor, before his fist was tightening in Axel's shirt and pulling him closer.

"Then you can go ahead and go," he hissed. "Go chase him all you want. But you can count me out. I give up. I quit. I'm tired of this. Just go away. I don't want to see any of you again."

Axel's eyes widened, before they narrowed into slits. "You don't know what you're saying, bastard."

"I know what I'm saying," Riku said. "I'm saying that I'm not doing this anymore. I don't care about him anymore. I'm not going to waste another second of my life on this shit. I hate this. I hate you. I hate him."

"Liar," Axel said.

Riku's hands went still.

"Get out," he said.

Axel stood there for a moment, back rimrod straight and eyes cold. Before him, Riku stood panting, face contorted with anger and furious tears building in his eyes. His hands clenched fitfully, the knuckles white and tense, veins wrapping around the thin, pale flesh. He looked like a wild thing.

"Fine, bastard," Axel said, voice somehow both horribly mocking and more serious than he'd ever heard it. "Just go ahead and run. It's not my ass that'll regret it later."

And with that, he swept out of the house, leaving Riku standing there in the middle of his room, back bowed and utterly alone.

"Fifteen hours later."

Zexion rubbed at his forehead, and resisted his urge to jump out the car and plant his lips upon the glorious concrete of the Strife driveway. "Yes. I was aware. You've been informing me how much time has passed since eight last night."

"Fifteen. Hours."

"Really," Zexion muttered, "it's closer to sixteen, but who's counting?"

"I am. I'm counting."

"Ah," Zexion said. "Then you should get your numbers straight."

"I don't like you very much right now," Demyx said, but he was smiling as he tumbled out of the car and onto his lawn. He grinned, throwing himself onto the warm grass and spreading his arms comfortably across the ground.

"Finally," he moaned. "We're home."

"And you're quite possibly laying in chocobo refuse," Zexion said. "I hope you're not expecting any form of physical affection until you've thoroughly bathed."

Demyx grinned, took Zexion's ankle in one hand, and pulled. Zexion tumbled down onto him with a squawk, and Demyx immediately wrapped his arms around him, nuzzling their noses together.

"There," he whispered. "Now we can be dirty together."

Zexion gulped, his eyes hooding. "Did you just make a pass at me?"

Demyx grinned, and pressed their lips together.

It lasted about as long as could be expected. Behind them, someone coughed, and Demyx groaned, rolling onto his back and squinting against the glare of the sun.

Sora smiled. "Hey guys. How was the wedding?"

Demyx climbed to his feet, and took a step forward. "I am going to kill you," he said matter-of-factly.

Zexion stood, and carefully slid himself between his boyfriend and his boyfriend's two brothers, sure that if any mortalities occurred with him in a five mile radius, he'd be the one taking the blame. "There was no wedding," Zexion said. "We were lost."

Roxas and Sora glanced at each other.

"For fifteen hours."

"Yes."

"Fifteen."

"Yes."

"Hours."

"I think you two are trying for a point," Zexion said. "I'm just not sure what it is."

"The point is that in this family we believe in dating for over a month before we engage in athletic marathon sex," Roxas said firmly. "Anything else is a bit much."

"Nothing happened," Demyx said.

"I knew you were a little irrepressible," Sora told Demyx, "but I didn't think you'd go this far."

"Nothing happened!"

"Mother is going to be so disappointed."

"Nothing happened!" Demyx wailed. "Zexion, back me up!"

Zexion opened his mouth. Then closed it. "Well, to be fair, quite a lot did happen."

"I hate you," Demyx said. "We're breaking up."

"We love you," Sora said, in awe. "You're never breaking up."

"You should listen to him, Demyx," Roxas said. "This is pretty much the only person who'll ever think you're cool. If you break up, you'll probably never find anyone willing to put up with you ever again."

"It's really nice to know you guys have so much faith," Demyx muttered. He sighed, rubbing at his eyes. "Whatever. I don't even care. I'm going home to my nice warm bed, and I'm spending the next day asleep."

Roxas and Sora snorted. "I don't think you want to do that," Roxas muttered.

Demyx frowned. "Why not?"

"They're having sex," Sora said.

Zexion and Demyx froze. They stared at each other, mouths open.

"Leon and Cloud are?"

"Yup," Sora said, with far more relish than he probably should have used.

"On the couch."

"The noise was awful."

"We had to shimmy down the drainpipe."

"Did you know that your brother could stick his legs behind his head?"

"No," Zexion said. "I did not. And I really think I could have been happy not knowing that. My life would have been full."

"Sucks to be you," Roxas said, and shoved past him. Demyx frowned suddenly, glancing at his two brothers. He realized only belatedly that they were both holding twin plastic bags, overflowing with tiny scraps of paper.

"Hey, you guys," he said, pointing at the bags. "What are those?"

Just like that, the good cheer drained from both boys, and in simultaneous motions they pressed the bags to their chests, cradled almost protectively.

"You don't have to worry about that," Roxas said. "It's not your problem."

Demyx glanced at Zexion. The older man's face was like stone. "If it involves your war with my brother," he said, "then I believe it is my problem."

"It's not," Sora said quietly. "Not at all. Please stay out of it."

"Sora," Demyx began, but Roxas shook his head, interrupting him with a wave of the hand.

"It's only one more," he said softly. "Just one more time. I promise." He shouldered the bag, and bowed his head. Demyx couldn't see his eyes through the fall of thick bangs, but something in the line of his shoulders sent shivers up his spine.

"With this, we'll end it."

Axel shoved out of the house, cursing to himself.

That hadn't gone as planned.

The plan had been simple. After what had happened yesterday, he'd given Riku space. Pushing the kid wasn't going to help any. Riku had needed a long night's sleep, and time with himself. So that's what Axel had done. He'd given him his space. He'd given him his sleep.

But they didn't have the time to waste. They needed to act, and soon. If there was anything they'd learned about the Strife's over the last month, it was that they fought back, and quickly. They needed to do something. Anything.

He closed his eyes, and brought a hand to his eyes.

He hadn't…expected this. He'd known Riku was still pretty fucked, but…he hadn't expected this.

It was as he stood there, pensive and quiet and utterly somber, that he realized he was being followed by a short fat man.

It took exactly three seconds to reach into the bushes where the man was hiding, pull him out, and lift him to his eye level. This is probably because the guy was doing a terrible job of both trailing and hiding. The red cap did not go well with the greenery, for the record. To his credit, however, the man did not go quietly.

"P-p-put me down, you great big lummox! If the Captain hears about this, he'll have your guts for linens!"

Axel blinked. "I think you mean garters."

"And I think an ugly giant like you should refrain from correcting his elders! Put me down! Ohhh, when Maleficent finds out about this, she'll-"

"Stop."

The short fat man stopped. Axel brought him closer, and lifted one delicate eyebrow.

"I'll let you go," he said. "I won't even push you around any. Does that sound fair?"

"Indubitably," the little man said, adjusting his short blue pants over his large bellyl. "So go ahead and-"

"But."

The man fell limp, looking up at Axel with great big eyes. "But?"

Axel grinned. The expression was not very nice. "But first you have to answer a few of my questions. Truthfully. Or I'll throw you into a concrete barrel and roll you into the pier. Got it memorized?"

The man gulped, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Memorized."

"Good," Axel said. "Now. First:

"Who the hell are you?"

An hour later, a very pale-faced Axel set Bartholomew Quigley Smeethington down on shaky legs, reached into his pocket, and withdrew a cell phone. Slowly, he punched in one of the few numbers he knew by memory, and paused.

Three rings later, the phone clicked, and a melodic voice echoed through the speaker.

"Axel? What do you-"

"Shut up, Kairi, and listen," Axel said. "I need you to tell me everything you know about Maleficent."

Roxas and Sora were walking down the street, quiet. Between them hung a single scrap of paper. Sora glanced down at it. His fingers curled around it, shaking.

"You think we're doing the right thing?"

Roxas shrugged beside him, his face uncharacteristically white. "Doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters."

"It doesn't," Roxas said. "Not if we end this. We can make up for it all later. All right?"

Sora didn't get a chance to answer, as small arms grabbed hold of his shoulders and spun him around.

Kairi stood there, her cheeks as red as her hair, and her forehead shiny with sweat. She was very clearly not happy.

"You," Kairi said, her pretty face a snarl. "You. We…we need to talk."

The two brothers glanced at each other, then averted their gaze. "There's nothing to talk about, Kairi," Sora said, carefully avoiding her eyes. "We're just walking home."

Kairi lifted a surprisingly strong hand and shoved it against his chest, stopping the backward step he had been beginning to take. "No," she said. "I think there's plenty to talk about. What on earth have you done to my brother and Riku?"

Roxas and Sora tensed. In a voice painstakingly devoid of emotion, Roxas spoke.

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing they didn't do to us first."

"Oh, stop it," Kairi said. "Stop it. From the very beginning, they've done nothing but try for you. And I know you guys have a point. Of course you do. They're idiots. But they're not cruel idiots, and they don't deserve the way you've been treating them."

For a long moment, they were quiet. Then, Sora shifted.

"No, Kairi," he said. "I think we do understand. Maybe they're idiots. Maybe they don't mean any of this. But that gives them no excuse. They don't have an excuse for the way they acted. He doesn't…" he paused, wiping at his eyes.

"He has no excuse for the way he acted with me."

Kairi shook her head wildly, stepping forward and taking his shirt in her hands. She fisted the fabric, her small fingers squeezing and releasing spasmodically. "No," she said, desperately. "No, Sora, you don't understand-"

"But I do, Kairi," he cried. "I tried to be friends, I tried to apologize, I tried to forgive, I tried to just…stop everything. I did! I tried to believe he maybe liked me for me. And it's like no matter what I do, and no matter how I try, the whole universe has it out for us. The whole universe up and decided any kind of relationship we could have would be wrong."

Kairi scoffed, but her voice was trembling. "Only if the whole universe also goes by _Maleficent_."

Sora blinked. On the seat behind him, Roxas sat a little straighter. "Wait. What?"

"You heard me," Kairi said, her breath coming quickly now. She opened her hands, relaxing her hold on his shirt, and took a step backward. She smoothed her hands over her arms self-consciously. "All of this-the misunderstandings and the idiocy and the growing of mutant muskrats-it's all because of Maleficent."

Roxas and Sora stared. And then they frowned solemnly.

"That's a very mean thing to say," Roxas said gravely.

"She might be odd, but she's not the devil."

"You two aren't even trying to pay attention!" Kairi shouted.

"Why should we?" Roxas said suddenly, taking an infuriated step forward. "You just keep saying the same thing over and over again, and I don't know why. I thought you were our friend, Kairi!"

Kairi looked at him then for a moment, her eyes wide and wet and hurt. "I am," she whispered, voice trembling a bit. "I am your friend. You're my best friends."

"Then-"

"But, Riku's my friend, too," she said, words like gasps. "And I could no more betray him than I could the either of you."

"He's been horrible. He's been cruel."

"Did you ever bother to wonder, Sora," Kairi interrupted, turning to stare at the boy in question, "why the hell a past conversation was suddenly broadcast to the entire neighborhood, just as the four of you had finally decided to settle your differences?"

Sora opened his mouth indignantly. Then it snapped shut. "Uh."

Kairi blinked. "No. You're lying."

"It's not like we didn't have other things to worry about, you know," Roxas said tightly, still staring at the ground. "The why doesn't matter."

Kairi glanced up at him, her entire face tightening with suppressed emotion-anger, or frustration, or something too terrifying to dwell on. "This isn't _like_ you two. You're going too far. You're acting like a pair of jilted lovers."

Sora jerked. "What-"

"And it doesn't matter," Kairi interrupted, shaking her head wildly. "You're both being cruel beyond imagining, and it's not even the point. The point is that someone is messing with all of you, and we don't know why. We don't know how. Maleficent may not even be a part of it! But someone is playing the four of you against each other like chess pieces, and it's not right!" Kairi paused for breath, her small chest heaving with the effort it took not to cry. She sighed, and wiped a weary hand over her eyes.

"This is not their fault."

"They still said those things," Roxas said quietly, fists still clenched, back still bowed. "They've still spent the last month treating us like toys."

"When have they ever treated you like toys?" Kairi said. "From the very beginning, they've played this game like equals, and rivals. They've never looked down upon you. If anyone has looked down on the other, it hasn't been them."

Sora jerked. "We haven't. We've never-"

"Every word Roxas has ever said about them has dripped with contempt," Kairi said. "And I don't care about misunderstandings, and I don't care about instinctual hate. I don't know why you're doing this. For pride? For revenge? They're not perfect, Sora! They make mistakes! That doesn't change what's in their hearts."

"People who care about each other don't say things like that," Roxas hissed. "They wouldn't say-"

"Roxas," Kairi moaned. "You of all people should know how badly things taken out of context can sound."

"What kind of context-"

"A thousand kinds," Kairi said, voice cracking. "People say things sometimes. Things they don't mean. Things they don't believe. But that's not what your problem is, and it never has been. Your problem is that you can't stand the idea that he might have actually wanted you."

"Dammit!" Roxas shouted, slamming his firsts angrily against his thighs and half screaming in anger. "He does not care about-"

"Shut up!" Kairi shouted. She crossed the distance between them and shoved him back, suddenly as desperately furious as he was. "Shut up! You know he does! You know! You just won't admit it, because if you do then suddenly you're the bad guy! Suddenly you're the one who's been hurting a person who cares about you! Worse, because you've been dragging Sora and Riku into this, when all either of them ever wanted was to be left in peace, away from you!"

Roxas went white.

Beside him, Sora shook, but didn't say a word.

"D-don't," Roxas began, licking his suddenly desert-dry lips. "Don't talk to me about Riku."

Kairi shook her head slowly, face a frozen mask. "No, Roxas," she whispered. "I'm going to talk to you about Riku. Because he's a good person. He's so dumb sometimes, and he's so proud, but he's good. And if he messes up so much, it's only because he's scared, and because he has an inferiority complex the size of Hollow Bastion, and because despite all of that he's never known how to not try."

Roxas scoffed shakily. "That jerk thinks he's God's gift to mankind. He doesn't-"

"He does," Kairi said. "Of course he does. Because when you've been thrown away your whole life, and you've been unwanted your whole life, and then suddenly you're thrust into a family where every single member is either freakishly powerful or freakishly intelligent or both, and when everything you do is done better by the only people in the world who care about you, and when you live every single day of your life with this tiny, unceasing fear in the pit of your stomach that one day everyone will see how pathetic you are…that they'll see how much less you…"

She trailed off, shaking and looking suddenly as lost as a child. She closed her eyes, and breathed. When she opened them, though, she wasn't looking at Roxas anymore. Her eyes were entirely on Sora.

"When you live like that," she continued, the words whispering from her lips, "you can't help but overcompensate. It's either that, or turn into a pale caricature of a person, and Riku is too strong and desperate to do that. But because of the life he has led, and because he was thrown away at an age too old to forget and too young to not care, and because after a decade of being all alone in a place where no one cared about him, he suddenly found himself with a mother who would do anything for him, and a father how learned to love him like a son, and a brother who learned to view him as a friend…because of all that…"

Her mouth opened and closed for a moment, but no words emerged. Sora couldn't bring himself to speak, or help, or do anything but watch her struggle for breath and wring her hands desperately.

"He doesn't care about people easily," she whispered finally. "I can count the number of people he loves on my hands and still have fingers left over. But when he does care about a person, he does it with all his heart. The fact that he hasn't given up on you after a month of this should prove that." She laughed once, almost bitterly. "You would both know that by now if you weren't so preoccupied with your anger and injured pride to see."

Sora flinched as if struck, his fists clenching. Whether it was in bone-wearying humiliation or terrible fury, Kairi couldn't tell.

"This," she repeated, once again quiet, "was not their fault. And it wasn't yours, either. I can't blame you for taking offense at them. They're idiots. You're idiots. You're all big fat idiots, but even so, it was no one's fault. It was just one dumb coincidence after another, and somewhere along the line, for some reason that may or may not have to do with munny and gambling pools, people started interfering. But, please," she said, and now her hands were clenched in supplication. Her eyelids fluttered rapidly, trying to blink away the half-infuriated, half-sorrowful tears threatening to pour over. "Please don't doubt them. I'm not asking you to like them back. I'm not even asking you to be friends. No one can ask that. But please. Roxas. Sora. Please. Axel's spent the last day pacing around the house like a caged animal, planning and planning and getting absolutely no where. Riku's not answering his calls, but I know him, and his room is probably a wreck, and he's probably standing in the middle of it, alone and not knowing what to do and…" She wiped at her eyes with the back of one small fist, shaking.

"I love you all so much," she whispered. "You know I would follow you anywhere, and I'd do anything for each and every one of you. Please. Trust me. Forgive them. They did nothing wrong."

Then silence, for what seemed to last an eternity. Kairi stood there, hunched in on herself as if terrified. Roxas sat, his head bowed, heavy bangs hiding whatever expression he was making. Then finally, Sora sighed. The sound rasped from his lips as if through a block, and he closed his eyes.

"I'm so tired," he murmured.

Kairi bit her lip. "Sora?"

He laughed suddenly, but the sound seemed more weary than anything else. He lifted a hand to cover his eyes, and shrugged, the gesture small and so much weaker than it should have been on Sora. "I'm just tired," he whispered. "Of being mad all the time. Of feeling like this all the time. My heart hurts. My stomach hurts. I don't like it. It's not fun anymore." His trembling smile widened, and he rubbed at his eyes.

"Kairi," he said, the words quaking. "Can you take me to Riku?"

Roxas blanched and choked back a cry. "Sora-"

"Roxas!" Sora barked. He shoved his bangs out of his eyes, the movement jerky and angry. "Stop. This has gone far enough. I don't have it in me to be mad at a person whose worst sin was trying to be my friend. I'm not like you."

Roxas jerked back as if the words were a physical blow. "Sora-"

Sora waved a hand shakily through the air, cutting him off. "I-I'll fight you on this if I have to, Roxas. I know we're brothers, but I can't…I can't let you continue this. Not anymore. It's wrong."

"Sora-"

"Stop."

The words were not Sora's. Kairi stood there, her eyes red. She swept a hand over her face, and sighed.

"There's one more thing I have to tell you."

Roxas laughed bitterly. "What more could you possibly say?"

Kairi met his eyes. They did not waver.

"I wasn't joking about what I said about Maleficent."

Sora laughed uneasily, shifting from one foot to the other. "There's no way Maleficent could have done that. She's harmless."

"Maybe," Kairi said. "She's also at the head of one of the largest gambling rings in the city. Hades, and the Queen, and Oogie Boogie, and Jafar, and Ursula, and a dozen others I can't remember. You have to have heard of them."

Sora hunched over, eyes suddenly wary. "No. Maleficent can't possibly be with them. She couldn't really-"

"She is," Kairi said. "She's practically their leader. She…she'd always ask me for gossip. She'd always ask me if anything interesting had happened. She said she liked placing wagers on the outcome. She _told_ me." She closed her eyes, and breathed.

"And what do you think Maleficent has displayed interest in now?"

Sora and Roxas were quiet for a moment. Then, simultaneously, they looked up. "They wouldn't-"

"They would," Kairi hissed. "They have. Sora. Roxas. The most powerful people in the city are up to their eyeballs in bets as to who will win this war. And Riku and Axel were about to end it. Some of these people have staked half their fortunes on the outcome of this stupid, stupid fight. Do you really think they'd let it die just like that?"

Sora shook his head slowly. "No. They couldn't have. It's impossible. They can't have-"

"It makes sense."

All heads turned to spin towards the person who'd spoken. Axel stood there, face oddly drawn. To Kairi's right, Roxas tensed. She ignored him.

"You okay?" she asked. "You look pale."

"I'm fine," he answered, and decidedly did not take his eyes away from Roxas's. "I ran over here." He smoothed a hand through his hair. "How much did you-?"

"Everything," Kairi said. "I told them everything."

"You haven't told us anything," Roxas said unsteadily. "You haven't even…how do you even know this?"

"I found one of her guys following me," Axel said. His eyes didn't waver. "I made him answer my questions."

"Then he called me, and I put things together," Kairi said shakily. "I've been hearing Maleficent talk about gambling on the phone to her friends for the last three months. I thought they were talking about Bingo."

"Bingo," Roxas said. "You…you had her under your nose for months, and you thought she was talking about Bingo?"

"I didn't know!" Kairi cried. "I thought she was harmless!"

"The woman breeds killer plants! Of course she's not harmless!"

"' _There's no way Maleficent could have done that_ ,'" Kairi quoted. "' _She's harmless!_ '"

"Stop!" Sora cried suddenly. He jerked his head at the street plaque, then turned to stare at Kairi. "What time is it?"

"Why?" Kairi asked. "What does that have to do with-"

"You don't understand," Sora said. He turned to Roxas, face a rictus of desperation. "If they're right, we need to stop it. Do you have her number?"

"No," Roxas said, shaking his head. His face was pale. "N-no, I deleted it. I thought we wouldn't need it anymore."

"What are you talking about?" Axel asked furiously. "What's wrong?"

Sora spun towards him, frantic. "It was supposed to be the last blow. The last one. We were going to end this, once and for all. B-but if you guys are right, then we have to-"

"It's too late," Roxas said unsteadily. He lifted a hand. On his wrist, the face of the large watch affixed to it said five oh eight. "Look. It's already five."

Kairi and Axel glanced at each other worriedly, then back at Roxas. "Why? What happens at five o'clock?"

"Oh no," Sora whispered, and took off down the street.

Roxas made to follow him, but Axel caught him around the shoulders and spun him hard, until they were standing face to face.

"Don't run," he snarled. "And tell me: what happens at five o'clock."

Roxas fidgeted, his eyes following Sora's retreating form down the street. "I…I need to-"

"Roxas!"

Roxas jerked in surprise, and bowed his head. "W-we…we called someone," he said, his voice trembling. "We asked her to do us a favor."

Kairi blanched. "You weren't going to hurt Riku. You weren't."

"We weren't," Roxas stuttered. "It wasn't that. She's not the sort you'd ask to hurt someone physically. No one was going to lay a hand on him."

"Then what!?" Axel cried furiously, shaking Roxas like a doll. "If not that, then what!?"

Roxas looked for a moment as if he would fight back. Then he closed his eyes, and went limp.

"She was just going to say things. She's…really good at saying things."

Kairi fisted her hands in her skirt, and trembled. "Roxas," she whispered slowly. "What were you going to have her say?"

"Things!" Roxas cried, squeezing his eyes shut. "Just things! They weren't that bad, we just wanted to tell him…we just wanted to end this, and-"

"Roxas," Axel said, voice so venomously quiet it hurt to hear. "What on earth were you going to have someone say that could possibly end this?"

Roxas told him.

Kairi went still. Her face turned white. Roxas closed his eyes tighter against the sight of it.

"That's not so bad," Axel said, but he didn't sound like he believed the words. "Anybody could say that."

"My God," Kairi whispered. "My God. You didn't."

"It's not so bad!" Roxas cried, in some combination of anger and fear. "You heard him! It's not that bad!"

"It's Riku!" Kairi screamed. She twisted her hands in her hair and tugged. "You…do you have any idea what you've done!?"

"We just wanted to end this!" Roxas shouted. "We thought they'd…after what they'd said yesterday-"

"Roxas!" Kairi half-sobbed, her pretty eyes wide and wild. "Nothing he could have said could possibly hurt more than what you told that person to tell him. Nothing."

She stood there for a moment, shaking. Then finally: "Who was it?"

Roxas took a step back, flinching. "What?"

"You heard me," Kairi rasped. "Who did you ask?"

Roxas was quiet for a very long moment. Then he spoke, in a quiet, quiet voice.

"Maleficent."

Sora sprinted down the street. His lungs felt like they were about to burst, and there was a stitch in his side that threatened to double him over every time he took a breath, but he didn't stop. Not when he was so close. Not when it was five sixteen, and their houses were just around the corner.

Maybe Maleficent hadn't called. She'd always been strange. She never did what she was supposed to. Maybe she'd forgotten. She was probably off playing Bingo with her friends right now. She was probably feeding live mice to her killer flytraps. She…she could be doing anything, but she couldn't be doing this.

Not now.

Sora was going to knock on the door, and Riku was going to come down, and they were going to forgive each other. Once and for all and forever. Sora was going to say that he'd acted like the hugest asshole, and that he'd overreacted for everything, and that Riku had deserved none of it. No where near what Sora had dished out.

They were going to be friends. Sora was going to ask him to be friends. He was going to drop to his knees and beg, if he had to. After all this…

They both deserved apologies. Huge ones. Massive ones. The difference was, Riku had given his. Again and again and again. Sora couldn't even remember if the word _sorry_ had ever crossed his own lips.

They were going to be friends. They would be. Because Maleficent hadn't made the call. Maleficent was in her creepy old house, feeding her creepy old plants, and hadn't called.

She hadn't called.

Sora was still telling himself this when he rounded the corner, and slammed straight into Riku.

He tumbled backwards a few paces, tripping on his feet, feeling them slide out from underneath himself. He winced in expectation of the way the ground would feel as it slammed into his body, and closed his eyes.

A large hand wrapped around his wrist and pulled him upright. Sora fell into Riku's chest.

Sora pushed himself away almost immediately, bending over and clasping his knees. He closed his eyes, gasping for breath.

"I ran here," he said finally, through his wheezes. "I needed to say something. I had to say something. I-"

"No," Riku whispered. The sound was venomous, and it set something in the pit of Sora's stomach freezing. Slowly, Sora looked up.

Riku stood there, quiet and solemn as the grave. His face was deathly white. His eyes were red. Something in the stare of them turned Sora's heart to ash, and he took an involuntary step backward. He bit his lip, and pressed his hands to his chest. "Riku?"

Riku looked at him, and did not smile. "No," he said again finally, quietly. In his right hand was a cell phone, in his left, a piece of paper. The words were written in black. Sora knew what they said.

"No," Riku repeated, the words so quiet Sora had to stop breathing if only to hear them. They whispered through the air like venomous butterflies, and for one heart-stopping moment, Sora wanted to die.

"No," Riku repeated, one last time.

"I think you've said quite enough."


	20. Chapter 18: Tumbling down

**Disclaimer:** still not mine

* * *

 **Ch** **apter Eighteen: Tumbling down**

People make mistakes.

Roxas had hoped Sora would never realize that he could.

It took a few minutes for Roxas to catch up to him. Part of the reason for that was that Sora moved quickly when he wanted to; he'd always been fast; he'd always been strong. For all Roxas's accomplishments, he didn't think he'd ever be able to fully catch up. It didn't bother him. Jealousy had never occurred to him. Sora was better than he was—to Roxas, that was both a comfort and a fact.

Sora moved faster than he did. That was the reason that Roxas would give anyone who asked why it took so long to find him. But it wasn't the only one.

Sora stood at the bottom of the Leonhart driveway. Roxas came to stand behind him. He did not let himself ask what was wrong.

"Where is he?" he asked instead.

Sora remained turned away, staring into the distance as if still focused on something he could no longer see.

"He's gone."

Roxas took him by the wrist, and pulled him home.

It didn't take long. They were neighbors; they'd been standing fifty feet from their own door. But the sidewalk path from the Leonhart house to their own felt a lot longer than it should have, and Sora's arm was a lot colder than it should have been, and by the time Roxas made it to his porch his heart had gone loud in his chest and he felt pretty sure that his teeth were gonna chatter out of his jaw. Weird, that something like the realization that you'd probably emotionally fucked over someone whose biggest crime was being a stupid teenager could make you feel so cold. He wouldn't have expected that. His anger had always burned hot.

Before the door clicked shut behind him, he thought he felt someone's eyes on his back. He also thought the weight of them felt pretty familiar. But if they were Kairi's he didn't want to meet them, and if they were Axel's, he didn't want to know. He kept his back perfectly straight and closed the door.

Sora didn't pull away when Roxas led him down the hallway, and he didn't pull away when Roxas led him past the lounge, where Cloud and Leon no longer were. Roxas deposited him at the kitchen table, carefully keeping his gaze somewhere to the right of Sora's face, far enough away that he didn't have to actually look at whatever expression was there. Roxas stood there, immobile, for a fraction of a second. Then he pulled open the refrigerator door.

"Mom said she would be early today," Roxas said into the silence. "I'm thinking I could make scones."

Roxas grabbed flour from the pantry, then sugar, then blueberries, then whatever else he could remember Demyx having used the last time he'd bothered to stand still long enough to actually cook something that took longer than fifteen minutes to make (baking soda? the fuck was he supposed to do with baking soda), mixing it all together because he figured that's what you were supposed to do with food. The oven preheated somewhere to the right of him. Behind him, Sora continued saying absolutely not a single word.

"There are more important things to worry about," Roxas said.

Sora didn't say anything. On second thought, Roxas added an egg. He was pretty sure you were supposed to add eggs to scones.

"We shouldn't have forgotten that," Roxas continued, grabbing a spoon and shoving it into the flour-sugar-blueberry-egg mixture, blindly hoping for the best. "We've been forgetting it all along. School's going to start again soon. Our friends are going to forget what we look like soon. Mom's working so many jobs I can't even keep track of them, and Cloud is the only one who's pulling in munny to help, and we've spent so much time worrying about people we're never going to see again in a few years that I haven't even thought about entrance exams, and if I don't start worrying about that soon I'm not going to get into RGU, and I can't do that. Mom needs us. I can't."

The mixture in the bowl looked vaguely dough-ish. He molded it into awkward, fist-sized clumps and stuck the lot of it onto a pan.

"It's not something you should get upset about," Roxas said. His hands clenched around the oven handle. His back had, without his knowledge or permission, gone a little bowed. "I know you. I know you will. But we did what we had to do. Whether we were coming from a good place or not, or if we had all the information or not. Even whether they deserved it or not. I know you don't believe that, but it's true: even whether they deserved it or not. None of them would have been good for us. And it wouldn't have mattered to me or Demyx, because Demyx doesn't care about anybody except himself and us, and I don't—" he swallowed, tried to get his hands to close. "I don't need anyone but myself and us. But you wouldn't have deserved it. You're better than we are. He would have made you love him and then torn you apart. "

The oven dinged. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a breath, then opened it and slid the tray in.

"This is good," Roxas finished. "Even if what we did was disgusting. Even if what we did was—was low. In the end it'll save us. That means it's good."

"I'm going to see him."

It was a good thing Roxas had just put the tray of scone-wannabes inside the oven; his grip had suddenly gone lax, and if he'd still been holding them he felt pretty sure they would have crashed to the floor. "What?"

The chair Sora had been sitting on clattered behind him. For the first time since Roxas'd grabbed his hand and proceeded to drag him home, he turned to look Sora in the face.

Sora's cheeks where white, and tense, oddly somehow less full than Roxas remembered (had Sora been eating? He couldn't remember. He hadn't noticed anything. He couldn't have not been paying attention to something as important as that). His jaw was tighter than Roxas had ever seen it before. There was something strange about the color of his eyes, dark and bruised and terrified, like the blue had become purple and the person standing in front of him had somehow changed. The last time Roxas had seen Sora looking like that, he'd been fifteen, and their parents had just told them they were going to divorce.

"I'm going to see him," Sora said again. "I have to go."

Which was what Roxas had been afraid Sora had said.

"Don't," Roxas said.

"I will," Sora said, quickly, the words tumbling over themselves out of his mouth. "I need to."

"You don't."

"I do," Sora said. "He didn't deserve it. No one could have deserved it. She was horrible, I was horrible, I hurt him, and he didn't do anything, he didn't do enough to justify that." He made a noise that sounded horribly involuntary. "His face. You didn't see his face. You didn't see him. He loved me, he thought I was good, I thought I was good, and when he looked at me now it was like I made him sick. Of course I made him sick. I make myself sick. I'm so sick."

Sora's cheeks were in Roxas's hands. Roxas didn't know why they looked so pale; they felt blood-flushed red.

"It wasn't your fault," Roxas said. "I made you do all of this. I pushed you into following me. I did it for a reason: because whether or not he deserved what that woman said to him, everything he's done from the moment we met has been either horrible or very easy to interpret as horrible. But even if I hadn't, you still wouldn't have done any of it if it hadn't been for me."

Sora looked at him then. For just a moment, the franticness left his eyes, and when he spoke, he almost sounded confused.

"Roxas," he said. "What makes you think that's an excuse?"

Roxas opened his mouth.

"I did it," Sora said. "Because I was upset, and you were upset, and I didn't want to leave you alone. But I still did it. I could have tried to calm myself. I could have tried to stop you. I could have tried harder to reconcile, or to be kinder, or to make it clear that I wanted—" _Don't cry,_ Roxas thought, _I won't forgive anyone if you cry_ ; "—I wanted to be his friend. I'm not your flunky. I went along with it because I wanted to. Saying that you started it isn't an excuse."

There were ways Roxas probably could have responded to that. Denial, maybe; arguments; or just saying again, as often as he needed to, that it didn't matter if Riku hadn't deserved it, that it didn't matter if what they'd done had been sick, because the only thing Roxas cared about was making sure that his family was happy and well and safe, and from the very first moment Roxas had set sight of him, Roxas had known in the depths of himself—in the instinctive, furious tides that made him think of enemies and past lives—that Riku wouldn't have brought Sora anything but pain. So he could have responded. But at that moment, the doorbell rang, and the sound hadn't even finished echoing before Sora was sprinting to the door. Roxas followed as quickly as he could, trying to think of what he would do if the person waiting outside was Riku.

It wasn't. Their mother stood there, toeing off her shoes, shoulders so much more slumped than Roxas wanted them to be. Her face looked tired. Roxas studiously spent less time focusing on the way his chest had suddenly clenched at the sight of her, and more time looking at the way Sora's fists had done the same.

"Hey, babies," Rinoa said, smiling at them, so brightly the expression almost erased the tired lines of her face. "Do I smell scones?"

Roxas opened his mouth to answer.

Sora breathed a small, horrible sound, and squeezed his mother's hand, and then pushed past her and out the door.

Rinoa blinked after him, purse forgotten on the welcome mat. "Oh," she said. "Did I say something wrong?"

Roxas stared at Sora's retreating back, stomach curdling, heart frozen oddly in his chest. _Don't go after him. You've done quite enough._

"No," he rasped. He swallowed, and closed his eyes, and wrapped his arms around his abdomen. "No. It wasn't you at all."

There were many ways a person could begin to describe exactly what had happened to Axel today. They could summarize. They could allegorize. They could perform the series of events in interpretive dance. It would include a lot of bashing of heads against walls, probably with a round of mournful screams. But each of those ways would necessitate a great deal more energy than either Axel or Author currently possessed, and would in any case be a lot more quickly summed up with a simple itemized list. So:

A summary of Axel's day, in an itemized list:

•death

That was about it.

Yes, it had been more a metaphorical death than an actual one, and the only thing that had actually died was his sense of hope, but the point was he felt like death, and looked like death, and if he happened to run into one Bartholomew Quigley Smeethington in the near future there would probably _be_ a death, so he thought the summary worked well enough.

He wasn't happy. That was, in the end, the only point.

His sister had left him an hour earlier. Reno was gone. His parents were who knew where, doing who knew what. On another day, he probably would have appreciated the solitude. On another day, however, he at least had the option of being with someone, if he decided he was tired of being alone. Kairi had disappeared, to her friends, maybe, or to Sora, or to any of the people she went to every time her brothers fucked things up. She had a support group. But Axel's support group had always been Riku.

Fuck.

The house wasn't good for him right now. He had to go.

He jogged down the steps, taking them two at a time even though his mother hated them doing that, would go distant and strange every time she saw. He grabbed his wallet from the kitchen table, toeing on his shoes. Then he opened the front door.

Sora stood there, fist poised to knock.

"I," he said, then swallowed. "Sorry. I need your help."

Axel took him inside.

He'd closed the door in Sora's face, first. But Sora had spent the next five minutes pounding at the door and yelling, and his neighbors already thought they were all serial killers without also antagonizing them with an impromptu rendition of Ballad of an Upset Boy, so. Axel took him inside.

He drew him to the living room because the only other room not perpetually covered in dubious stains was the kitchen, and he didn't much feel like offering the kid a glass of water. He also didn't feel like offering Sora a seat. He wasn't sure Sora would have taken it even if he had.

Axel settled against the wall, trying not to feel as if his stomach was minutes away from heaving itself up onto the floor. "So talk," he said at last. "Before I decide you're not worth the effort and kick you out."

If he hadn't been looking right at him, and looking closely, he wouldn't have seen Sora flinch. Something about that made the tips of Axel's fingers ache; there was wrongness in the subtlety of the motion, in the fact that it was hidden at all. He'd known Sora for the space of a month, and he already knew that Sora wasn't the sort of person who hid things. Sora was soul. When he hurt, he jerked.

That flinch felt different. That was the sort of motion you made when you'd been hurt for so long that you'd learned that showing weakness only made the pain continue.

There was a strange brightness to Sora's eyes he'd only ever seen once before. It had been on Riku's face then.

"Reno's your brother," Sora said.

Axel kept his gaze on him. He didn't let it waver. "Yes."

"Reno's your brother," Sora said again. "Kairi's your sister. Your parents work for Shinra. Since the moment we moved here, Kairi's told me about you all. About some of the things you get up to. Part of the reason I've always been a little more open to you than Roxas. Kairi was my friend before she was his. She told me about you. I had no idea who you were, and it took me days to put the two of you together, but I still knew about you. She told me about the things you've all done."

A stone had come to life in the pit of Axel's belly. It had blossomed when Sora mentioned Roxas. It had begun making its presence painfully known when Sora said the things you've all done.

"If you came here to tell me things I'm already pretty aware of," Axel said, slow, "you're going to leave."

"No," Sora said, and this time when he looked up his mouth was stretched up. "It's only that you know a lot more than I do about the way things like criminal underbellies work, and I figured that would probably be a big help, since I just decided to take them all down."

The words in Axel's mouth died.

"Yeah," he said when he'd finally found them again. "Sorry. Maybe I'm missing something. There's a pretty good chance of that, given that you left the object in your last sentence vague. Let's try reiterating, this time for the benefit of those of us who don't have a good view of the inside of your head."

Sora laughed. There was something too hard about the sound.

"Sorry," he said. "I meant Maleficent and company. I'm gonna take them down."

Vaguely, Axel thought he felt the blood draining from his face. Taking into account the extent to which he was currently distracted by the level of sheer what-the-fuckery in front of him, though, he didn't quite notice.

"Yeah," he said. "You have to go."

"Do you think I can't do it?" Sora asked.

"I saw you at the Battle of Egg's Deep, asshole," Axel said. "I know you can do it. What I don't know is that you'll be able to pull it off without bringing down the wrath of Radiant Garden's entire criminal underworld, which, for a suburb of this size, is sort of implausibly large."

"I can do it."

"No one can do it," Axel said. "These people have been embedded in both Bastion and Garden for the last who the hell knows how long. They own half of everything and are probably going to buy the rest of it. They're vicious. You won't even get close enough to touch them. They know everything about this place. You've lived here two years."

Sora laughed again, hands going behind his head. Then the smile fell.

Sora did not have a face built for coldness. His eyes were large. His mouth was wide. Expressions danced over his face like butterflies, burning hot and happy, filled eternally with love and kindness and hope. In all the time Axel had known him, he couldn't remember ever having seen anything blank cross his face. Hell, in all the time _Kairi_ had known him, she probably hadn't seen anything blank cross his face.

So it wasn't coldness that Axel saw.

He looked angrier now. Not in the distant, feral way Riku got. Not in the way Axel got, as if any wrong word would make him explode. Not even angry like Roxas. Just angry. That was all.

"They hurt my brother," Sora said. Quietly, his voice still higher than it would be in a few years; he was still young. How had Axel never fully understood he was so young? "We could have ended this, we could have been friends, we could have at least tried to be happy. Whether it would work out or not, we could have at least taken steps. They interfered. They hurt Riku. They hurt you. And I would try to stop them for any of the above. Because I want to be your friends. Because I want to bring this to an end. Because they're hurting people, and that's not good. But they hurt my brother. I don't think I can forgive a person for that."

Manic, Axel thought. That was the word he was looking for.

"They're not going to get a chance to exact revenge," Sora said, quite softly now. "I didn't say I was going to get them back. I said I was gonna take them down."

The words didn't echo around the living room. They were too soft for that. But Axel felt like they did. He could still hear them bounce oddly off the walls of the inside of his head.

He hadn't known Sora long enough to feel unequivocally like he could make judgements about his character. It took months to get to know people sometimes. Years. More importantly, his attention had always mostly been taken up by Roxas. Sora was difficult to ignore; even at his worst, Sora was difficult to dislike. But he wasn't Roxas, and that meant that as much as Axel felt that he and Sora could probably have gotten along if things had worked out, if no one had gotten in the way, he'd never paid as much attention to him as Riku had.

He didn't know him well enough. But he trusted his instincts enough to know that everything about this situation was wrong.

"Why do you think I'd want to be party to that," he asked.

Sora shrugged, looked away. "Because of pride. Because you're mad. Because you know that if you let this go there's not gonna be an end to any of this, and they're gonna keep playing us against the other until none of us will ever be able to get back up. But mostly because Riku's your friend. Riku's your best friend. And they hurt him. You're not going to forgive that."

"You don't know me," Axel said. "You don't know what I'll forgive."

"No," Sora said. "But Roxas would have cared for you if he could. That says something about the kind of person you are. I don't know you enough to trust you, but I know him enough to trust that."

Axel watched him steadily, quiet for a long moment. "That's pretty cruel, you know."

"I just used your best friend in an argument with you because I want you to help me bring a whole group of people down," Sora said, and for the first time since he'd arrived Axel saw the diamond-hard brightness in his eyes waver into something that looked a lot more like despair. "I handed his heart on a platter over to Maleficent. Why did you think I wouldn't be cruel?"

"It's not you," Axel said.

"None of this was supposed to be me," Sora said. "But that excuse only works for so long before you start to think that maybe you've just always been a horrible person, and you were just too wrapped up in yourself to notice."

Which, he supposed, was the crux of the entire problem.

He examined Sora; took in the too-loose hold of his shoulders, loose in the kind of way you only ever were when you were forcing yourself; the curve of his fingers; the way his entire body looked brittle, as if it were only a few careless shoves away from snapping in two. Sora hated himself, Axel realized. He'd been unhappy with the situation for the last month. He'd been trying to keep everything relatively bloodless for almost as long. But whatever part of himself he'd given up in order to do what he'd just done to Riku had been, in Sora's own head, unforgivable.

It said a great deal about the strength of Sora's heart that he was trying to do this anyway. He wasn't going after whatever council Maleficent had created because he thought it would make Riku forgive him. He wasn't even doing it for revenge. Whatever Sora had said about Riku and Roxas, Axel didn't think that Sora fully understood the concept of revenge. He was doing it because if he didn't, they would keep hurting the people he cared about. But he wasn't going to get any kind of absolution out of it.

If Axel had been a kinder person, he'd have tried to comfort him. He would have told him that Riku would forgive him. That eventually, he'd be able to forgive himself. That this too would pass, and that one day Roxas would like them and Riku would be able to look at them and they really would be friends. Kairi would have said that. So would Riku.

But Axel wasn't kind, and he didn't think that was the sort of thing Sora wanted to hear right now.

Roxas hadn't looked at him when he'd pulled Sora inside the house. Roxas hadn't said a word.

He wondered whether Roxas hated himself as much as Sora did, or worse.

"What would you want me to do?" Axel asked.

Sora shifted his weight from one foot to the other, clenched his fists, then let them go.

Then he looked Axel straight in the eyes and smiled.

Captain James Hook kept a more nocturnal schedule than most people did. It wasn't that he worked nights; honestly, one would be hard pressed to figure out whether Hook (legally) worked at all. It was only that Hook fancied himself something of a man of the world, and by "world" he meant "the internet." The internet never stopped. That meant that Hook sometimes needed to adjust his sleeping schedule to whatever he thought best. It worked well for him. He was, after all, a pirate.

The point was that he generally didn't wake up until mid-afternoon, and by the time six in the morning rolled around he was only just getting ready to go to sleep. So it was with a somewhat tempestuous bout of irritation that he finally flopped onto his expensive four-poster bed, closed his eyes, and realized that his phone had just begun to ring.

He hit the ignore button.

Thirty seconds later, it again started to ring.

He hit block.

One minute later, the phone again began to ring.

So did his Sk*pe.

He fell out of bed into an inelegant pile on the floor, his nightclothes tangled around his legs. He spent the next few seconds trying to pull himself up to his feet, but he'd been up for going on twenty-six hours this time, and his limbs weren't working as adroitly as he preferred. Finally, with a burst of superhuman effort, he managed to manhandle himself onto the desk-chair, and hit accept.

"SMEE," he said. "YOU HAVE WOKEN ME AT AN INCONVENIENT HOUR FOR THE LAST TIME."

On the other end of the video chat, B.Q. Smeethington wrung his hands nervously together. "T-terribly sorry, Captain. You know I wouldn't interrupt your beauty sleep for anything other than matters of the utmost importance."

"THAT'S A LIE, SMEE," Hook said. "YOU HAVE NEVER INTERRUPTED MY SLEEP FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN MATTERS OF THE UTMOST UNIMPORTANCE."

"It's just that I felt this was something you would probably want to know about now, rather than later."

"I'M GOING TO FIRE YOU," Hook said. "THEN I'M GOING TO REHIRE YOU FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF AGAIN FIRING YOU."

"It's NeverShare," Smee said.

All remaining traces of sleepiness immediately disappeared.

The sudden silence did not seem to comfort Smee. "I'm terribly sorry," he said again. "I really thought this was for the best."

Hook spent an endless, soundless minute trying to restart his brain. "What," he said at length, "is wrong with NeverShare."

Smee twisted his fingers so tightly he appeared to give himself a cramp. "The government's seized control of the entire company, Captain," Smee said. "On the grounds of pirating. S-someone finally gave them proof."

Hook stared at Smee for a long moment, jaw slack.

On the bedside counter, the phone again began to ring.

Elsewhere in the city, so did four others.

Cloud and Leon had been in the Strife living room, ostensibly divesting it of its previous status as a no-sex zone, when Demyx and Zexion had arrived from their fifteen hour sojourn across what was apparently the whole damn country. Tifa had been with her friends. That meant that the Leonhart house was empty, and that there really wasn't a better place for Demyx and Zexion to go.

Demyx pulled Zexion inside, toeing off his shoes and sliding them haphazardly (although not as haphazardly as he typically did in his own home; you couldn't afford to be rude the first time you were visiting your boyfriend's place) out of the way. He shot Zexion a glance over his shoulder. "You don't have to worry about it."

Zexion looked up from his place on the floor, where he'd been kneeling to rearrange both pairs of shoes. "I'm not worried."

"Your eyebrows look like they're gonna meld," Demyx replied. "Relax. They're all adults. Sort of adults. Adult-ish. They can handle themselves."

This time, the look Zexion shot him was less perfunctory and more really-really-unimpressed. "They welded together a giant phallus and deposited it in my yard."

"I said adult-ish," Demyx said. "And to be fair, they did a pretty good job of it."

Zexion didn't bother to respond to that. Demyx slid his hand through Zexion's, twining the fingers together and tugging them up to his mouth, until Zexion pulled his eyes away from the window and back toward him. "You don't need to worry," he said, quieter than he wanted to be—if nothing else, no one could say that he didn't know how to be sensitive. "They wouldn't do anything bad. They haven't done anything bad since the entire thing started. You don't have to worry about him. They'll all be fine."

"I'm not worried," Zexion said again.

Demyx wasn't sure if he believed it. He took a step backward, deeper into the house, hands still laced. "Come on, then," he said. "Prove it."

He led Zexion down the hallway, then let Zexion lead him up the stairs, heart leaping in exultation with every second that passed that did not see Zexion letting go of his hand. Zexion brought him to a room at the very end of the hall.

The inside was neat, almost impossibly so; it looked nothing at all like Demyx's at home, where clothes were splattered across the floor and music sheets were bursting across every available surface. There was a bookcase along the far wall, novels and encyclopedias spilling over the shelves. A narrow bed, with military corners and a single pillow rested snugly against the headboard. And a desk, nothing on it save for a pencil holder and what looked like a bookmark shaped into a number 6.

"It looks like an editorial from Better Homes and Gardens," Demyx said.

Zexion let go of Demyx's hand, dropping his wallet atop the desk. "Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment," Demyx said in awe. "This is a pod person room. This is a Stepford Wives room. This is the sort of room you see in magazines, except in magazines they actually make an effort to make the room look lightly used. This is a crime against adolescence."

Zexion snorted. "If that's your reaction, I'm beginning to feel frightened of what I'll be met with when I visit yours."

"You're never visiting mine," Demyx swore. "You'd break up with me."

"I wouldn't leave you over a room," Zexion said. "You'd have to have dirty plates lying around everywhere."

"Yeah," Demyx said. "You'd definitely break up with me."

Which was when Zexion shot him the most grossed-out look Demyx had ever seen, and how could he really respond to that except to grab him by the arms and kiss him.

The expression on Zexion's face smoothed almost instantly, lips going soft beneath his with the ease that came from comfort, and having spent a substantial portion of the last three weeks kissing. Demyx slid his hands up from Zexion's arms and to his cheeks, angling them exactly how he wanted, teeth nipping at Zexion's lips. He could feel Zexion's breath catching in his chest, the way his ribcage had expanded around an inhale, but had been distracted before it could properly collapse. He wanted to feel more of that. He wanted—

 _You're worried too,_ a voice in his head whispered.

Demyx replied, _Nope._

He took a step forward, backing Zexion up one pace, then another, until the backs of Zexion's knees hit the bed. Zexion went easily, taking a seat on the edge, a hand coming up to wrap around the nape of Demyx's neck. The nails dug into the skin there. A shudder ran down Demyx's spine.

They hadn't had sex yet. It wasn't for lack of trying; Demyx wanted to. More importantly, Demyx was fairly sure Zexion wanted to (and he had no idea why that had come as so much of a surprise, but it had, and sometimes before he went to sleep he thought of Zexion, and Zexion's blue, blue eyes, and they way they looked at him sometimes, intense and distant and as if he wasn't sure whether Demyx was a person or a puzzle, and the idea of what those eyes would look like during sex made him want to pull Zexion to the floor). But the circumstances had never quite aligned in their favor. Their make-out sessions had only recently begun adding tongue.

But he was in Zexion's room now, and Zexion was pulling him onto the bed.

He lowered himself atop him, thighs on either side of Zexion's lap, the position not quite comfortable but not so awkward that he'd have to stop. Like this, he could see Zexion watching him, eyes half-open even while they kissed. He pushed Zexion's heavy bangs out of his face. "Don't think about it."

Zexion's eyelids went a little hooded, the expression the same combination of faraway and sharp that made things start rolling around excitedly in his gut. "Think about what?"

"Anything," Demyx said. He slid a leg over Zexion's, settling himself more firmly over his thighs. "Everything. I haven't done anything this last month except think about them. They make it difficult not to. But right now you're here. Don't think about whatever they're getting themselves into. Think of me."

Zexion looked up at him watchfully, hands still rested on the bed. "That sounds somewhat possessive."

"I'm in your bedroom, I'm sitting on your lap, and you're thinking about our brothers," Demyx said. "I kind of think I have the right."

Zexion looked up at him, irises dark, dark rings around his blown pupils, face as blank and emotionless as if he were a doll. Then the hand that had settled around Demyx's neck shifted, curving up around his skull. "So distract me."

Very widely, Demyx grinned.

He slipped his fingers under the hem of Zexion's shirt, circling his nails lightly around Zexion's waist, drawing senseless patterns along the skin while the muscles under his fingers trembled and jumped. He dropped his mouth back to Zexion's, nipped lightly at the curve of his bottom lip. They parted beneath his easily, and then Demyx almost lost track of what he was doing with his fingers.

He'd never quite been able to figure out how to describe the way Zexion kissed. Sometimes Demyx wasn't sure whether he even _had_ kissed before they met. But the motions of Zexion's tongue were hot and steady and confident, and his lips didn't feel unsure at all, and every sweep of that tongue against his sent shocks down his back and made heat coil in his gut, and all that meant was that he was starting to harden against his pants and with the both of them so close there was no way Zexion wouldn't be able to feel it.

From the way Zexion went still against him, he guessed Zexion had.

Zexion pulled back, cheeks flushed and hair in disarray. His eyes were still open, though; the expression there had not changed.

Slowly, slowly enough that Demyx realized what he was doing three seconds in and could only spend the remainder of the time it took to complete the motion in breathless anticipation, Zexion lowered his hands to Demyx's hips.

The fingers tightened. And then they moved Demyx forward in one long, sinuous roll.

Demyx didn't think he could be faulted for pushing Zexion back onto the bed.

And suddenly Zexion's hands were everywhere, sliding his shirt up to his chest and tugging at his hair, and Demyx was meeting each movement with one of his own, fingers working the button of Zexion's slacks, pawing at his back, squeezing his thighs and using the grip to grind himself down against him, until each motion squeezed the breath out of him and his stomach felt like a sun. Somehow in the last minute Demyx's shirt had ended up on the floor. He felt wildly like laughing; it would figure that it would take sex to get Zexion to muss himself up. He should have tried this ages ago. He should have kissed him the first time they met.

But there was no room for thoughts like that with Zexion underneath him. There especially wasn't any room for them when Demyx's shirt was off, and Zexion's pants were open, and he still couldn't feel Zexion's chest.

He withdrew, pushing himself up on arms that were feeling deliciously worn. Zexion was still looking at him, but his eyelids had fallen further, and his pupils had blown very wide.

"You want to do this, right?" Demyx asked anyway.

Zexion fixed him with a look that would have made Demyx feel very small any other time, but right now only made him want to do something X-rated to Zexion's throat. "I'm not having penetrative sex."

Demyx politely ignored the fact that Zexion had actually just said something as mood-killing as _penetrative sex_. "I didn't bring condoms. I mean other things. There are other things. Loads of other things. I would, for the record, _really enjoy_ doing other things. So. Other things." Demyx lowered himself further onto him, until their noses were brushing and every time Zexion exhaled Demyx could feel the forced-steady pulse of his breath. "Is that all right?"

Zexion watched him silently for a minute so long Demyx was almost sure he should give the cause up for lost.

Then he lifted a hand, and ground the heel of it into the crotch of Demyx's pants.

"Yes," Zexion said, as Demyx's brain shorted out. "It's fine."

The next few minutes passed in something of a blur. There were teeth on his neck, nipping and tugging and worrying at the skin. There were knees pressing hard against his waist. Most importantly, there was a palm on his dick, working him through the cotton of his boxers, and he knew he ought to reciprocate but the entire world had zeroed in around him and his fingers were too busy trying to hold onto Zexion's shoulders for dear life to worry about whether or not he was being rude.

He could feel the blood rushing hot to his dick. He could feel his orgasm only a minute away.

The phone rang.

Zexion kept going. For a minute, Demyx did, too. Then he realized exactly whose ringtone it was.

Under any other circumstances, Demyx would have ignored it. No—that was a lie. Under any other circumstances, Demyx would have answered, yelled something about cockblocking assholes who couldn't let a guy have a good thing without trying to screw it up, and then turned off the phone. But the ringtone kept warbling something about ice cream, and that particular tune was rare enough to send a crush of cold water over Demyx's brain.

His hand shot out and wrapped over Zexion's arm, forcing it still. He didn't look at the way Zexion's face had turned into a mask of confusion, then a mask of nothing at all. He especially didn't look at the way Zexion's cheeks were flushed, with arousal or embarrassment or both, or the way his eyes had lost their heat and had turned once more into blank, emotionless voids. He leaned over the side of the bed to fumble at his phone. "Yeah," he said, once he'd managed to find the answer button. "Hello?"

On the other end of the line, Roxas took a deep, shaky breath.

"Sorry," Roxas said. "I—it's Sora."

We leave our stalwart heroes in their somewhat awkward position to join the adults, who also, halfway through committing a sex act, realized that they were lacking prophylactics. Instead of contenting themselves with a round of handjobs and/or frottage, however, these two decided they wanted actual skin contact. No longer would they be satisfied with third base. Cloud hadn't had sex in a year, and Leon—well, Leon _had_ had sex in a year, but he and Tifa had a working relationship and it had been mostly just for fun. The point was, they were going all the way, and nothing and no one would stop them.

Which is why, halfway through committing a sex act (and forty minutes before Roxas and Sora came home and serendipitously did not walk in on their cousin and their ex-arch nemesis' adopted father doing uncomfortably explicit things on the couch), they stopped and went on a condom run.

By "went on a condom run," I mean "tried to go on a condom run."

What actually happened was something like this:

Five minutes post-Cloud-saying-"wait-stop-I-wanted-to-actually-fuck:"

"They're stuck."

"What do you mean they're stuck. They're your pants. They can't be stuck."

"They're stuck."

"You are a grown man, your pants are not actually stuck."

"They're stuck."

"This is impossible. You're doing it wrong. Your pants are not stuck."

"HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU NEED ME TO REPEAT MYSELF BEFORE YOU GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK CHICKEN-HEAD SKULL? IF I SAY MY PANTS ARE STUCK THEY'RE STUCK!"

Ten minutes post-Cloud-saying-"wait-stop-I-wanted-to-actually-fuck:"

"Hngh-"

Gasp. "Shit...shit..."

"Keep—no, don't do it softer, what kind of asshole are you, keep going..."

"I'd go harder if you didn't look like a strong breeze would bowl you ov—ouch, fuck!"

"What was that, Leonhart? Something about how pathetic you are?"

"Screw you, dick, see if I actually—ah! F-fuck..."

"Hn— _ahhh_."

" _Fuck._ "

Fifteen minutes post-Cloud-saying-"wait-stop-I-wanted-to-actually-fuck:"

"Keys...keys..."

"Look under Sora's bag, I thought I heard something fall."

"No, these are charms—a dog, a duck—ah, this mouse one's actually pretty cool."

"Yeah, Rinoa got him that one, it's—ah! Or—no, sorry, these are Demyx's."

"Demyx has a car?"

"Had a car. Lent it to a friend. Next time we saw it it was at the bottom of a cliff."

"Ouch. How did Rinoa take that?"

"It was a bad week. He's been paying it off somehow, though. Don't actually want to know where the hell he's getting that sort of munny, but anything that makes her life a bit easier is good enough for me, you know?"

"I know. Hell. Maybe he and Sora started a band and are saving up the proceeds."

"Hah. Like that would ever—yes! Yes! Keys!"

Twenty minutes post-Cloud-saying-"wait-stop-I-wanted-to-actually-fuck:"

[ CENSORED, AS THE HOST WEBSITE DOES NOT ALLOW NC-17 ]

As you can see, it took them a while.

However, thirty minutes later (and ten before Roxas and Sora walked in, nerves wracked and extremely stressed, and serendipitously did not see something they really didn't want to see), Cloud and Leon were finally buckled up, out of the driveway, and headed on a condom run. Yes, they'd released some tension beforehand. Yes, the both of them were wearing underwear they hadn't been wearing an hour ago. But the thing about not having banged someone in a year (and only having masturbated intermittently in that period) was that you had a lot of tension to work off, and Cloud was honestly a little too keyed-up to feel embarrassed about it.

"Take a left," he said.

Leon flicked his turn signal, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. "There a reason you wanted to go to this particular pharmacy, instead of the perfectly serviceable one five blocks down?"

Because the other one was called _Don Corneo's_ , and the last time Cloud had set foot inside it, he'd been dressed as a girl. "Not at all," Cloud said. "Now a right."

They pulled into the parking lot a half minute later, undoing their seatbelts and hopping out of the car with a little too much gusto to be entirely cool. They spent a minute arguing over whether or not it would be better to just send in one of them at a time, because if they both went in and started tripping over themselves in the middle of the condom aisle while coincidentally wearing clothes that might have belonged to someone else (the lights had been off), shit might be a little obvious. Then, after they'd come to the conclusion that they didn't much care, they spent a minute arguing over ribbed versus ultra thin ("Ultra thin feels better!" "I'm the one who's actually gonna have it inside me!"). Then, after they'd just thrown both in the shopping cart, they spent a minute arguing about lube. It was horrible.

It was also possibly the most fun Cloud had had in his life.

They fell back into their respective seats laughing. Leon dropped the bag of condoms and lotion and lube into the back seat; Cloud leaned forward and kissed him. Leon's mouth opened immediately, smile pressed against Cloud's mouth, so widely that just the feel of it made Cloud want to laugh and laugh. His chest felt buoyant and light. For the first time in years he could feel his heart pounding out of something other than anxiety. He hadn't even thought about leaning forward. He'd just wanted to. That was as simple as it had to be.

Leon nipped at his bottom lip, his chin, drew back with a grin that was the best thing Cloud had ever seen. "This whole venture was probably ill-advised."

"This whole month was ill-advised," Cloud said. He laughed, cut himself off, then decided that repression wasn't worth the effort and let the laugh release. "I can't believe you made me pay."

"I left my wallet in your living room," Leon said. "You might have noticed it. It was in my pants."

"Don't even try to blame me for those pants."

"You cut them apart."

"The zipper was stuck."

"So was your shirt, but you didn't see me trying to saw it apart while you were still wearing it?"

"I was in a hurry," Cloud said. "I haven't been laid in a year."

"And now you're suffering the consequences," Leon said. "Which entails having to pay ten whole munny for condoms and lube. Congratulations."

"Screw you," Cloud said, but he was smiling as he said it, and when he leaned forward for another kiss Leon met him, happy and smiling, halfway.

There were issues with the situation he'd gotten himself into—with sitting in a car at eight in the evening in the middle of summer, the sun dipping over the horizon but not yet so far gone that you could call this anything resembling night. They were in the suburbs, and that meant that the world went quieter as night fell, but eight was still early enough that there had been children in the store. They were only a handful of miles from home, which meant that they'd seen Mr. H. Ades around one aisle, and Ursula Minor around another. He could come up with a dozen compelling reasons why this evening—this relationship—was probably something he shouldn't involve himself in, beginning with the fact that divorce proceedings or no, Tifa and Leon were still technically married, and ending with the fact that he was Cloud, and healthy relationships were new to him. The last time he'd been able to act without second-guessing every move he'd make, he'd been quite young. The last time he'd been in love, he'd been a child, and things hadn't worked out very well for him.

But Leon's mouth was on his. It was getting remarkably difficult to care about anything outside of that.

They kissed languidly, most of the desperate fervor of an hour ago faded now into something softer and more companionable. Leon's mouth moved over his. His tongue swept over his. His hands were quiet, curling around Cloud's shoulders, his arms, tangling into his hair and brushing through it in a soft, repetitive motion that made warmth curl in both stomach and chest. When was the last time he'd done anything like this. When was the last time he'd been able to kiss someone for the sake of kissing them, without worrying about what would come next, or what they'd say the next morning, or how much effort it would take to pull himself together again in the wake of the anxiety and self-hatred that always came with letting himself go.

Never. Oh...never.

He rested their foreheads together, trying vaguely to remember where kissing had ended and breathing had begun; when the feel of a tongue in his mouth had become slow, even puffs of air against his lips. There were eyelashes brushing his skin, and thick brown hair obscuring his vision. They made his heart hurt. They made him feel as if he could shout.

"I'm sorry," he said, before he could tell himself not to. "For all of it. It wasn't anything I intended to do."

Leon shook his head, short and gentle, soft enough that the heat of his skin never left. "There's nothing you need to apologize for. You didn't do anything wrong."

"I wasn't kind."

"I confessed to you about a year before I should have," Leon said. "I didn't think about how it would bother you. I made you upset. You didn't need to be kind."

"I should have been," Cloud said.

Leon curled his fingers further into Cloud's hair. "You worry about Rinoa," he said quietly. "You watch out for your cousins. Your friends love you, and there's never going to be an indication of what kind of person you are better than the fact that you have Yuffie, and Tifa, and Zack, and Aerith on your side. But even if you didn't. Even if you weren't: I hurt you. Whether I meant to or not, I screwed a lot of things up. There was nothing cruel in you refusing to humor me. I hurt you. I made it harder for you to take care of yourself. Don't say sorry. You didn't do anything wrong."

Cloud closed his eyes.

They rested there a minute, bent over the gearshift. Outside, the sun had finally descended over the roofs of shops and pharmacies and buildings. The streetlights had begun to glow.

"I think I've actually emotionally exhausted myself out of the desire for sex right now," Leon said. "But I still want to take you home."

Cloud's snorted quietly, eyes still shut. "Yeah."

Leon's nails scratched lightly at Cloud's scalp. "Tomorrow, if you want. Or the day after. Whenever. You know I'll let you choose."

"I could say never," Cloud said.

Leon shot him a look that said _one hour ago you were literally trying to pull my soul out by way of my penis_. "Then it'd be never," he said anyway. "It's not something I can't live without. I love you. That means I want you more than I want your dick."

"Romantic," Cloud said, laughing, but he wasn't lying, and it was. He leaned forward in his seat, digging the heel of his palms into his eyelids just long enough to let himself breathe. "Stay with me tonight," he said. "Not anything else, sorry. Rinoa—they all need their sleep. And not if—not if Tifa doesn't want you to. You'll—you'll have to ask. I'll ask. I'll apologize. Shit." Breathe. Be happy. Breathe. "But if she says it's all right. Then stay with me."

Fingers closed around his wrists.

They didn't tug. They didn't do much of anything except rest there and wait. Cloud lowered his hands anyway.

"Yeah," Leon said. "Whatever you need."

They took the drive home slowly, not speaking much except to remind each other of directions, or to mention a story someone or other had once told. Their fingers weren't clasped; Leon liked using both hands while driving, and after having actually asked Squall 'I give up just call me whatever you want' Leonhart to keep him mostly-platonic company for the night, Cloud needed a few moments in his own head to recuperate. They weren't even leaning against each other; the gearshift was in the way; it was too uncomfortable to do. But Cloud's heart kept a steady, comforting beat in the cage of his chest, more rhythmic than he'd ever remembered feeling it, and the only reason he was aware of it was because he'd spent so long being hyperaware of its anxious pounding that now that it only felt peaceful and slow he thought he'd actually slump. It had been so long since he'd last felt weightless that he'd forgotten that with weightlessness came relief.

It wasn't just Leon. That was true. Nothing and no one could have made Cloud feel like this if he hadn't finally decided that maybe it was about time to try and change. His friends had spent the greater part of their adult lives trying. They loved him. They wanted him to feel well. But there were problems with being human, and there were problems that came with having lived the sort of life he'd lived, and those problems meant that no one could save another person, no matter how badly they wanted to, if that person did not want to be saved. Sometimes not even then.

But Leon had helped.

Cloud needed to be happy. He couldn't bear the thought of having to go back to feeling like death.

They pulled into the Leonhart house a few minutes later. The lights were on in the far second story window, the one that belonged to Zexion. The lights in the Strife household were all dark. Cloud tipped his head against the window to look at them. Idly, he wondered where the rest of his family had gone.

"Your brother's good to you," he said.

Leon shrugged. "He's as good as he knows how to be. He doesn't really have a choice."

"There's always a choice," Cloud said. "Family doesn't always mean anything. Demyx doesn't care about his father. He doesn't hate him exactly. He just got tired. He stopped being able to care."

Leon turned his face to look up at the light. "That's easier for some people than it is for others."

"It's easy for Zexion," Cloud said.

"You don't know him well enough to say that."

"No," Cloud agreed. "But Demyx gets along with him. Demyx doesn't get along with good people, except his brothers."

Beside him, light shafts from the street lamps outside illuminated the loose curl of his fingers on the steering wheel. The growing darkness made it difficult to see the expression on his face.

"I took care of him," Leon said at last, quiet and faraway. "I watched over him when he was still young enough to not realize exactly how much right he had to blame me for the things I'd done. By the time he figured out just how much of a mess I'd made of both of our lives, he already loved me, and it was too late. When I say that he doesn't have a choice, it's not because he's my brother. It's because he loves me. Of course he tries to be kind."

The world behind his lids was dark. He could barely remember having closed his eyes.

It could be a choice. He believed that. He had to. Loving someone wasn't always a choice. You couldn't always help it, you couldn't always know. But the opposite. Forcing yourself to stop loving someone. From the bottom of his heart, he believed that could be a choice.

But that wasn't a conversation he wanted to have.

He opened the passenger side door, unbuckling while Leon did the same, the bag of condoms and lube held idly, as if they'd forgotten how much of a rush they'd been in an hour earlier, how desperate they'd been to be inside. Their hands brushed as they walked down the sidewalk to Cloud's house, not quite entwined but close, close enough to feel. Cloud thought about twisting his fingers around Leon's wrist, but he didn't have to, and it had been a long time since he'd last felt the freedom of wanting something without also feeling sick, nauseating need. Let him have this moment of companionship. Until either one of them decided to change it, he wanted to spend a few seconds remembering how it was to exist.

They settled at the top of his porch, Leon still close enough to feel. Cloud resisted the urge to bow his head against the wood of the door, because relaxed or not there were some signs of weakness he would never be comfortable showing to another person. "I want to talk to them tomorrow," he said. "Tifa. Rinoa, maybe. Zexion. The ones it'll affect the most."

"It'll affect the rest of them, too."

"Yes," Cloud said. "But they'll come after. I want to talk to my friend. I want to talk to your wife."

"Then we can start with them," Leon said. "They'll understand."

"Understanding isn't what I'm worried about," Cloud said. "It's trying to make sure everyone stays family."

"She's Riku's mother," Leon said. "She's my best friend. She will always, always be family."

Cloud shifted, shrugged. Leon turned to face him more fully. "It's always going to be strange," he said. "This whole situation is..."

"Ridiculous," Cloud supplied.

"Ridiculous," Leon agreed. "The boys. The friends. Everything. But it's going to work. It's going—even if it doesn't work. Even if in a month you decide that maybe I'm not actually the person you wanted. Even if you just want to be friends. I'm not going to rush it, I'm not asking you to marry me, we're—we're not going to talk about that. But family is family. They're our families. No matter what happens outside of that, everything is going to be okay."

Truthfully, Cloud wasn't sure he believed that. But he wanted to. That desire was almost as important as the actual belief.

"We'll talk," he said, instead of _I'm going to change myself until my heart is strong enough to agree._

Leon nodded, tugged at one of Cloud's blond spikes. "Tomorrow. We'll talk." He leaned forward, pressing the palm of that hand against Cloud's cheek just for a moment before drawing back onto the top porch step, then the one beneath it. "I'll be back in a half hour, if you still want me to stay. Let me talk to Zexion first. Tifa, if she's there. That fine?"

"Half an hour," Cloud said, the place where Leon touched a little warmer than the rest of him. "It's fine."

Leon disappeared down the sidewalk. Cloud did not let himself wait until he was sure Leon made it inside.

The house was as dark inside as it had appeared from the street, empty and quiet, the only noise coming from the fans still whirring in every room. He clicked them off one by one and turned on the A.C. instead, making a mental note to pay the electricity bill before Rinoa could get her hands on it and do it for him. He thought he could hear Rinoa breathing steadily in her bedroom behind the closed door, the bed creaking lightly with the way she sometimes tossed in her sleep. The boy's doors were open, though—they at least weren't home.

He made his way to the kitchen, turning on the light and eyeing the burnt mess someone had left on the countertop (he had no idea what the hell those were supposed to be, but they sure as shit weren't scones). The black crusts got thrown in the trash; the leftover ingredients got placed back in the fridge. Then, once the kitchen had been cleared and the counters were clean, he bent his head the way he hadn't been able to do outside, and breathed.

He could do this.

He laughed, and he clamped down on the sound the moment he made it, for pride or dignity or Rinoa, but the point was that he'd made it, and that the anxiety he'd felt every day of the last ten years of his life had gone, and now that it was absent he could feel more than the absence; he felt happy.

Odd, how much despair could come with knowing that you'd once again learned how to be happy. There was terror there. He hadn't remembered feeling that when he'd been younger. But he couldn't remember often being happy, either.

He bit his lip until the pain grounded him enough to stop feeling as if he would burst into laughter with every breath, then curled his nails into his palms until the sensation calmed him enough that he could actually take a step. When his heart pounded this time, it wasn't out of anger or fear. There was only anticipation there. The feeling that everything was going to be good.

He could do this. His friends were supporting him. Leon believed in him. Of course he could.

Someone knocked on the door.

Cloud's feet were moving before he'd ordered them to, taking him out the kitchen and down the hallway and to the front. Twenty-five minutes—strange, that he knew exactly how long it had been. He hadn't even realized he'd been keeping track of the time. But why shouldn't he, when the world was off his shoulders, and Leon was standing at his door waiting to come in and talk, and kiss him, and sleep. He could do this. He could be with another person without drowning under the weight of what he felt.

Twenty five minutes.

He opened the door.

"Sorry," he said. "I was in the—"

He stopped.

His heart once more began to pound.

Sephiroth stood there, smiling. He said, "Cloud."

And then he leaned forward before Cloud could say a word, and kissed him.

On the other side of Radiant Garden, Selphie's phone rang.

She thumbed it on one-handed, the other busy delicately painting her toenails in ombre shades of yellow, then lifted the cell to her ear. "Yeah, hi?"

"Turn on the television," Kairi said.

Selphie raised an eyebrow, nestling the phone between her shoulder and ear so she could grab her remote. "Where?"

"The news," Kairi said. "Any news."

The other eyebrow joined its peer. She obeyed.

Jafar sat in his large, opulent bathtub, head rested contentedly on the rim. He answered his ringing phone with a mild, satisfied sigh. "I trust you have a good reason to be interrupting me right now?"

"Turn on the TV," Iago said. "No, don't turn on the TV. We gotta pack light."

 _"Officials have declined to comment so far,"_ the newscaster said, _"but an inside source says that warrants have definitely been issued for the arrest of—"_

Hades stared at the television. His cell phone toppled out of his hand.

 _"—unofficially nicknamed the Council of Villains, a number of the city's politicians have been implicated in these illegal gambling rings, with alleged crimes that range from extortion and blackmail to possible premeditated murder—"_

Half-chewed gummy worms spilled out of Oogie-Boogie's mouth.

 _"—identity of the ringleader is still unknown, and our insider says that no one, neither police nor prosecutors, have been able to discover who—"_

The door to Ursula's house swung closed.

 _"—but rest assured we will certainly keep you updated on the latest in the story. Back to you, Lottie."_

Selphie stared at the television screen for a long, long minute. Then, thumb trembling a bit, she turned it off.

The phone lay fallen on the bed, half-atop a knocked over bottle of bright yellow nail polish. The call had not been disconnected. She lifted it slowly back to her ear.

"What happened?" she asked.

Kairi swallowed. And then she said, "I think it was Sora."

Sora's hands were trembling.

He'd left Axel in his house following their meeting and the things they'd done as a result of it. Axel would be able to get more done at home. Axel would be safer at home. More importantly, though, Axel had already seen quite enough of the most destructive parts of him; he didn't want anyone, especially not someone so closely connected to Riku, to have to see him at his worst.

Which left him here: standing on a porch, in front of a door, with one hand lifted and the other one by his side. Both of them were quivering.

He knocked.

It opened.

Maleficent stood there. Her smile was as wide as a knife.

"Oh," she said. "I've been expecting you."

She led him through her house, walking before him with the slow, indolent step of someone who'd never had to worry about a thing in her life. Her hair was piled atop her head in an elegant bun, and she was wearing a long, black dress. Both clashed somewhat discordantly with the way her arms were soiled up to the elbow with what looked like dirt. It looked strange. Most gardeners, Sora thought, wore gloves.

"You'll have to forgive me for not offering you anything to drink," Maleficent said, walking through the kitchen to the house's rear door. "I'm afraid I've spent so long with my plants these last few days that I haven't properly stocked the refrigerator. Outside, please. I wasn't finished."

Sora held the door open for her. She nodded politely to him and stepped outside first.

Sora had never been to Maleficent's greenhouse before. He knew who she was, of course; everyone knew who she was: reclusive, eccentric Maleficent. She donated to charities. She bred a very large number of plants. But he'd never spoken to her outside of everyday greetings. Kairi had always been the one who came by to help.

The greenhouse was alive. There were bursts of color everywhere, vines and flowers snaking up the walls, across the brick floor, waving slightly with the breeze. Most of it was in varying shades of purple and green. Some of them looked as if they would begin to move.

"It's very nice," he said.

"Thank you, dear," Maleficent said. "It's rather a lot of upkeep, but I am fond of my garden."

"People say muskrats more than plants," Sora said. "I never knew if that was true."

Maleficent laughed, a deep, throaty chuckle that seemed to begin at her waist. "The genetic experiments a woman performs in her youth should remain in her youth. Rest assured that now all I meddle with are my plants."

"No," Sora said. "Not all."

The smile on her face didn't drop. It did, however, spread wide and slow.

"I'll be perfectly honest," she said. "I thought that would have been the first thing out of your mouth."

She stepped back, making her way to a row of huge purple flowers. "I haven't seen the news reports yet," she said, lifting a large, dragon-shaped watering jug and trickling its contents into each pot's soil. "It's been so busy. My flowers are growing. Sometimes I wonder if they'll ever stop. But I _have_ received a number of calls. They're distressed. You made quite a mess."

Sora didn't let himself speak.

Maleficent smiled at him again. "How did you do it?"

He thought about keeping quiet. Thought about it very hard. But there wasn't much point. Even if he were the sort of person who preferred to keep their feelings inside—even if he had been born more like Roxas—what use would it be now?

"I had help," he said. "I had favors. I had people who wanted to help me more than they wanted to help you. That's all it was."

"Sora," Maleficent said. "You and I both know that's not all it was."

A few months ago, he might have started shouting at that.

He couldn't remember what passion like that felt like.

Maleficent turned back to her flowers. "I must admit, I'm impressed," she said. "All of us knew you needed to be watched. You're talented. Obscenely so. But I wouldn't have thought you could bring down an entire social tier in one day."

"I had help," Sora said again. "I didn't do it on my own."

"Ah," Maleficent said, mild. "No, I wasn't referring to whether or not you were capable of it. I meant that you've just destroyed several lives. I wouldn't have thought that was something you'd be able to bring yourself to do."

Sora's face had been white from the beginning, and so it was difficult to tell whether it had gone any whiter then. But he did feel dizzy now. That was relatively new.

"You did it to yourselves," he said. "There isn't a thing that you all haven't been accused of that isn't true."

"But to ruin someone's future over it," Maleficent sighed. "Hades is attempting damage control, but we all know he'll never be re-elected now. James's lawyers are attempting to file counter-suits that will never pan out. I'm not even sure where Ursula, Oogie, and Jafar have disappeared to. All they did to you was spur on a war of your own invention. And now see what you've done to them."

"They hurt my brother," Sora said.

"And if you think that's reason enough to ruin five lives, not to mention put a rather large chink in the careers of those who work with and for them, that's your prerogative," Maleficent said, "but I'm not sure it says very good things about you."

He would give anything not to be able to so thoroughly feel the beating of his heart.

Maleficent straightened. She wiped her elegant, fine-boned hands on a wet rag, drawing it over each finger in turn. Her dark hair did not spill out of its bun.

"You started this," Maleficent said. "You and your brother, with your pride and childishness and inability to see how ridiculous you were both being from day one. If either of you had ended this when you should have, we never would have heard of you. We never even would have gotten involved. We didn't get involved, actually—not until yesterday. All of your burnt bridges, all of your pointless excursions—those rest wholly on your shoulders. And because you could not accept the blame for that, you decided to instead place it squarely on us."

She was standing before him now. Her fingers were cool on his cheek.

"He cared about you quite deeply, you know," Maleficent whispered. "But for the life of me, I can't see why."

Sora's eyes snapped open wide.

He took a step back.

"You hurt him," he said.

"You did first," Maleficent said.

"I did," Sora said. "But I hurt him because I thought he was trying to hurt me. I hurt him because I thought I had to choose between someone I barely knew and my brother. I hurt him because I was stupid, because I am stupid, and I hurt him, and hurt him, and kept on hurting him. But I never hurt him for munny."

"That doesn't make much of a difference in the end."

"It does," Sora said. "Because at least I know what I did was wrong, and when I see him I'll apologize, and even if he doesn't forgive me I'll still apologize, and even if he hates me I'll still apologize, and until he tells me to stay away from him forever I'll apologize and apologize and I'll keep apologizing, not because I want him to accept but because I know what I deserve."

It wasn't until he saw the smile spread sharp and molasses-slow across Maleficent's face that he realized perhaps he'd said something wrong.

"Sora," she said, and laughed. "If that was what you wanted, why didn't you let me know?"

The pit of his belly squeezed.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Maleficent gazed down at him. The expression on her face looked horribly kind.

"If you want to apologize," she said, "I'll allow it."

Over her shoulder, she called, "My dear."

The door to the greenhouse opened. Someone stood there, framed in dark.

It was Riku.


	21. Chapter 19: It Won't

**Disclaimer:** still not mine

 **Author's Notes:** Two down; a happy early birthday to yarouka; SPOILERSSPOILERS sometimes i head-in-hands over how ridiculous and improbable this story is but then i remember that in the original canon riku basically assists in the destruction of a universe partly because he's upset about his best friend leaving him behind, so i can have explosions if i want to; for the sake of timelines, we will just pretend that everything is happening very quickly. or that people spend a lot longer making out than the text implies.

 **Warnings:** sephiroth, or: coercion, drugging, assault, and anxiety attacks as a result thereof. there's no sex, there will be absolutely no nonconsensual sex, but there is still coercion and drugging and assault, and those are all profoundly upsetting so if you're triggered by any of the above please run this by a pre-reader or skip the first scene. also, violence, felonies, and language.

* * *

 **Chapter Nineteen: It Won't**

This is something you should be aware of:

Books, movies, games tell you that there is no such thing as forgotten history. They tell you that everyone has secrets, and that those secrets will always, inevitably, be found out. You cheated on your test, you cheated on your wife, you killed the man who lived next door and buried him under the roses, and it doesn't matter how many years have passed since then—secrets don't stay secrets; someone will find out.

This isn't true. It's not even mostly true. Most of the secrets we bury stay where they belong: in the depths of our hearts, where we forget them or accept them or let them fester. Most of the time things do work out the way you want them to. Perhaps the larger secrets have an easier chance of being found out, or the ones that affect multiple people; it's difficult to pull off a successful murder! Let no one tell you otherwise! Please don't even try! But small secrets—the ones that don't matter much to anyone, except of course to us: the little lies, the hurt feelings, the minor misdemeanors that could probably get us in trouble if they were revealed, assuming anyone cared enough to reveal them—most of the time, your secrets stay secrets, and all the worry and paranoia and stress amounts to just that: worry and paranoia and stress. Most of your secrets will be carried to your grave. That's the truth.

But keeping something buried doesn't mean that it's disappeared, and it doesn't mean you're over it. Bury a secret long enough and sometimes it settles there, in the depths of you, and it takes root, and it grows. The next time you see it, it'll be strong enough to tear you down.

Ten years.

Sephiroth leaned forward on the porch of the house Cloud had slaved for, and kissed him.

The world around him went white.

He would never have an idea exactly how much time passed. He would never have an idea what, exactly, happened. He would never know if Sephiroth touched him, if he'd licked into his mouth, if he'd held him as gently as he always had, with tender fingers and easy movements and eyes that had always made Cloud feel as if he were an insect pinned to a wall, because Sephiroth had never loved him, Sephiroth had never cared. He didn't know. The moment Sephiroth kissed him, the universe went blinding white, and his head went blank, and for the second time in his life Cloud turned thirteen.

Sephiroth kissed him. Cloud did not know for how long.

And then he pulled back, and smiled, and looked down.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I would have begun with an introduction, but we don't actually have a great deal of time to talk."

Which was about all the warning Cloud got before Sephiroth wrapped an arm around his waist and began to gently guide him down the walk.

Cloud tripped after him for one step, two. He pulled at Sephiroth's grip dumbly, trying to rip his arm out of Sephiroth's hand with limbs that had suddenly gone quite soft. "No," he said, stumbling over the words like a toddler, like someone in love. "Stop."

Sephiroth didn't reply. Cloud jerked at his grip, tried to throw a punch. Sephiroth caught it as easily as if Cloud had been a child, leaning down and kiss him again, so deeply Cloud thought he'd combust. He pulled back a moment later, once more guiding Cloud down the road. Cloud followed, because he didn't know what else to do. He felt as if he were drugged, or drunk. His thoughts were fleeting, impossible to hold, images and words and disjointed phrases ( _Leon, couldn't, no_ ) that wanted to be coherent, cohesive ideas but couldn't find enough substance to manage it. His body felt weak in a way it hadn't since the last time Cloud had seen Sephiroth—as if the strength had fled from him, and the only thing keeping him standing was habit and whatever he possessed that passed for will. _Anxiety,_ he thought to himself vaguely— _you know you're not this person, you know you're not in this deep_ , but the thought came just as dimly as all of the other thoughts, and it disappeared just as quickly as they had.

He tried to step back, away from Sephiroth's grip. Sephiroth tightened his hold, and kissed him once more.

Sephiroth took him to a car, black and sleek, curving his arm a little tighter around Cloud's waist when Cloud reared numbly back. He opened the driver's seat and reached in to the glove compartment, withdrawing an opaque bottle. "Here," he said. "For your nerves."

Cloud yanked himself back. Sephiroth made a patient sound, took a drink from the bottle himself, and kissed Cloud until he had no choice but to open his mouth and swallow the drink down. He coughed immediately afterward, hard enough to almost vomit it back up. Sephiroth laughed and held a hand over Cloud's mouth until the desire subsided.

"Now come on," Sephiroth said. "When I said we didn't have much time, what I meant was we truly do not have much time."

Cloud possibly would have responded, but his head was already starting to feel even lighter and more blurry than it had been previously, and no matter how fully he knew that whatever had been in the bottle probably hadn't actually taken effect in a few seconds, and no matter how very aware he was of the fact that the only reason he was feeling dizzy right now was because he was likely working himself into a panic attack, he couldn't make it stop. Sephiroth tugged him down into the car while Cloud was trying to keep himself from falling, and then closed the door. "I'll be very upset though if you throw yourself from a moving vehicle," Sephiroth said, as he sat in the driver's seat and turned on the car. "Buckle up."

Cloud didn't. His hands were trembling on the door handle. Sephiroth glanced down at them and sighed the sigh of the patiently long-suffering, reaching over him to do up the buckle. He drew back slowly after he did, stopping at Cloud's mouth and kissing him again, deep and slow, tongue slipping past Cloud's lips. Cloud's eyes stayed open and staring straight ahead, his heart beating a rabbit-fast rat-a-tat against his chest.

"This isn't something to kill yourself over," Sephiroth said, drawing back, smile curved and placid and everything that had ever made Cloud simultaneously freeze and burn. "And you'll understand relatively soon. Don't lose your head over something so unimportant. Even I would expect better from you."

Cloud stared out the window, and focused on relearning how to breathe.

There were ways that people dealt with stress.

Repression was a good one. There were problems that lay in that method, of course—repressing your emotions didn't mean that those emotions went away; they just lay dormant for a while, and too much repression occasionally resulted in rather large explosions. But repression sometimes gave you enough time to work through a problem, and when the problem was dealt with, one could subsequently deal with the emotions you'd muffled before. So, repression was one. Ignoring it was another. That one didn't work as well. It often required an almost inhuman strength of will, and ignoring stress sometimes led to ignoring the cause of said stress, and when that happened nothing actually changed, and certainly not for the better. But sometimes you needed to. Distractions; burying yourself in friends, or family, or work, because if you focused on what was actually wrong with your life you'd probably lose control.

The only method that actually worked as a long-term solution, of course, was facing the cause of the stress and attempting to work it through, but that could be difficult. People weren't always capable, physically or emotionally or logistically or mentally, of doing that. There was no shame in it. Everyone dealt with stress in different ways.

Sora had always liked the last method best.

But Riku stood before him now, Maleficent at his back, and Sora's heart was pounding, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do.

It took him a few moments to deal with the incongruity of the image he was looking at. To look at Riku, tall, handsome Riku, with irises darker than he'd ever seen and a face that looked like it had been carved from stone—to see him standing in front of Maleficent, who looked at him with long, lovely eyes in a long, lovely face, and smiled. Surely his vision was failing him. Surely this was a joke.

But no matter how much he blinked the image didn't waver, and no matter how much he prayed Riku didn't go, and that meant truth, didn't it. It meant that what he was looking at was the truth.

"No," Sora said.

Neither of them said anything. Maleficent had drawn back a few steps, nestled in an aisle of plants so thick she almost disappeared between them. Vaguely, Sora thought that it would probably be dangerous to take his eyes off her. He couldn't help it, though.

Riku stood before him, silent and cold. For the first time in the entirety of their acquaintanceship, Sora had no idea how to read the expression on his face.

"Why are you here?" Sora asked.

 _Why do you think,_ Riku would say. _Come on. Use your brain._

Riku didn't say anything. The blank, stone mask of his face didn't change.

"Riku," Sora said again. "Why are you here?"

Nothing.

"Riku," Sora repeated, as if by saying his name enough maybe Riku would realize that Sora was speaking to him. "She did this. She did all of this."

Riku still didn't say a word.

"She did it," Sora exploded. "Your apology, our apology, everything that would have turned out all right, everything that could have been home, she and her pack of cronies ruined it all for munny. She did this. She ruined it. She did this to—"

Riku stepped forward. His hand came up to curl loosely around Sora's throat.

"Sorry," Riku said. "But I think that was actually you."

The grip around his neck had been neither tight nor harsh, and it was easy for Sora to stumble back, to get enough distance between them that he didn't have to worry about anyone touching him. But those three seconds of contact before he'd been able to get space between them had sent his heart thumping so hard against his ribcage that he thought he might actually throw up. He lifted a hand to the hollow of his throat, where he could still feel the light, careful impression of Riku's thumb. He opened his mouth.

That hadn't happened. It hadn't actually occurred. Riku would never hurt him. No matter how badly Sora had fucked up, no matter how badly Riku hated him, deserved to hate him. Riku wouldn't lay a hand on him. He wouldn't—

Fingers on his throat. Every gut in his body churned.

Riku stepped forward. The move was slow, self-assured, the kind of step designed to give the person you were stepping towards enough time to flinch, or run. But Sora couldn't do that, could he. Even if he were the sort of person to run away, why would he do that now. This was Riku. It was—

Riku watched him quietly with eyes that didn't fully look his. He lifted a hand, set it atop Sora's head. He turned it carefully to the left, as if trying to look at it from every side. "You're pale," he said. "You look sick."

Sora didn't feel pale. Truthfully, his brain felt as if it would be set on fire soon. "I'm not," he said. "I'm fine."

"Probably not," Riku said, somewhat matter-of-factly. "Look at you. You're shaking like a leaf."

Vices wrapped around Sora's throat, so much tighter than Riku's hand had been.

"Riku," he said. "Why are you here?"

"Because she asked me," Riku said. "And when I compared her to you, she really did seem like the lesser evil."

Sora was strong. Sora was brave. Sora had never, when it came down to it, been afraid of anything in his life.

Sora flinched back as if he'd been struck, and in that moment wanted nothing more than to run.

Maleficent stood between them and the door. He'd have to make it past her if he wanted to leave. She would see the desperation on his face. She would know.

"Don't," he said. "Please don't do that."

"Don't do what," Riku asked. His hand hadn't fallen from Sora's head. "Blame you?"

"Choose her," Sora said. "Even if you hate me you can try to get revenge on your own. You don't need to talk to her. You don't need a single thing she says."

"You sound sure."

"You don't," Sora shouted. "You're nice. You're strong. There's nothing she can give you that you couldn't get on your own if you tried."

"That's a cruel thing to say in front of her."

"I don't care," Sora said. Maleficent was smiling at him, she was smiling at them, why did she have to look. "You're a good person." His heart was palpitating, his eyes burned. "You don't need someone like her."

"Oh," Riku said. "Except I sort of do."

Behind him, Maleficent was a knife of black and purple and green. Sora had been doing his level best to avoid looking at her. He hadn't been succeeding very well, but he'd tried.

Now, though, he wanted to. It would be better to stare at her than to see Riku look at him with those sorts of eyes.

"What do you mean," he asked.

The hand in his hair dropped to his cheek. Gently, it drew his gaze back.

Riku had probably wanted to touch him like that, once.

"My mother left me on a sill," Riku said.

A tiny, impossible voice—a voice that hadn't existed a day ago. But lots of things sprung up when one finally learned fear—buried in the depths of his heart said, leave.

"I grew up in a home," Riku said. "When I wasn't being fostered, I mean, mostly I lived in a home." Riku was blurring before him. There was strangeness in that; Sora's eyes weren't watering. "My first foster family took me in when I was four. My next one gave me up after a month."

Nails on his jawbone. How much easier would this be if Riku just hit him.

"I've been beaten," Riku said. "Kind of a lot. I've been ignored. That was a little worse. When I was eight years old my foster family picked up and left for two weeks, and I didn't call social services because they were still better than the one's I had last, and I thought that maybe if I waited quietly they'd like me. I spent ten years in the system, and in those ten years I had two families who cared for me, and one family who was truly kind."

 _Hit me. Please hit me._

"Every one of them gave me up," Riku said. "I want you to know that. I want you realize exactly what it was you had her say."

Redundant. Sora knew what he'd had her say. That was why he sort of wanted to die.

"Do something to me," Sora said. "Do anything to me. Hurt me however you'd like. Please."

Mildly: "Would that make you feel better?"

 _Yes. No._ "It doesn't matter," Sora said. "I want you to feel better. Do anything you need to do to feel better. But she's not going to be it. Please. She'll hurt you."

"Like you did?"

"Not like I did," Sora choked. "I was worse. But she'll still hurt you. Don't do that. Please don't."

Fingers on his cheek. Riku had wanted to do that before, hadn't he. Riku had been—

 _Don't, don't, don't._

Riku tucked a strand behind Sora's ears. For one sick, torturous moment of self-loathing, Sora imagined what that would have felt like if Riku were doing it because he wanted to, and not because he felt nothing but hate.

"I hated him," Riku said.

Don't.

"Your brother," Riku clarified, soft and smooth. "I tried not to, I did. I knew that you would never really be able to accept me so long as he and I were at each other's throats. It would be important to you, that your brothers and your significant other would be able to get along. You love your family. You know that families are important. I think that was one of my favorite things about you. I didn't get one until I was thirteen."

Sora was going to vomit.

"But I still hated him," Riku said. "Honestly, pretty much from the moment I saw him. It was instinctual. He could have been nice to me and I still would have hated him. But he wasn't, and he wasn't, and no matter what I did none of it actually worked, and I guess I just kept hating him more. He was cruel. I didn't understand why you could treat him like a brother."

His throat was burning. It was getting very difficult not to heave.

"I would have expected it of him," Riku said again. "I probably would have expected anything of him. If he'd started going out with Axel for the explicit purpose of breaking his heart, I would have expected it of him. So I'm not sure why, at the end of it all, the person who was most cruel was you."

"Don't," Sora said, and he didn't mean _don't speak_ , or _don't say it out loud_ , because Riku deserved to speak and deserved to say it out loud, but the word erupted from him anyway, a testament to every cowardly thought that had ever filled his head. He didn't want Riku to ask for clarification. He didn't want him to even know.

"Why shouldn't I," Riku said instead. "You found my birth mother."

All went quiet and still.

Riku took a step forward. His voice was soft.

"I spent the first thirteen years of my life trying," he said. "Every time a family threw me away, I looked for her. Every time one of them hit me, shouted at me, left me for days alone, I looked."

Sora had wanted to hurt him.

He'd felt taken advantage of. He'd felt sick. The echoes of a loudspeaker rung against the inside of his head. He'd wanted Riku to feel as miserable as he did. He'd wanted nothing more than to make Riku feel a fraction of that pain. But he hadn't been able to bear the thought of doing something too drastic. He was angry, he was hurt; even so, he didn't want to ruin someone's life. So he'd come up with a compromise: something small. Something inconsequential. Something that would make Riku hurt, but that surely wouldn't actually have any effect on his future.

"And then came Tifa," Riku said. "And I had a family, and I had a mother, and it took me so long, it took me years, but one day I woke up and realized that I was fine."

No injuries. No physical pain. Nothing that would actually ( _ha—ha_ ) make it difficult for Riku to live his life ( _he hadn't known what heart palpitations felt like, hadn't known what it was to feel anxiety so deep he could hardly breathe_ ). He'd just thought _I swear I'll be satisfied if he just spends a few days being unable to sleep._

"My birth mother could live her life," Riku said. "I hoped she was happy. I hoped she was full. But I didn't need to know where she was. I didn't want it."

So he'd called in a debt. He'd asked someone who knew how to do that sort of thing to find him a name.

Maleficent had found it, and had made the call.

Riku bent his head to touch Sora's.

"I was fifteen years old," he said. "And finally, finally, I no longer wanted to know why she left."

And on the little strips of paper had been nothing but a name, and the words: _because she already had another child, and she didn't want you._

Memories could be terribly important. Sora had always known that more than most.

There were things he could do now. There were responses he could give. _I didn't mean to hurt you like this. At my angriest I wouldn't have wanted to hurt you like this. I didn't know it would be so horrible for you._ Half of them were true. Half of them might even hold weight. But Sora had always wanted to be a good person. He'd never known what it was to feel so much self-hate.

"I'm sorry," he said. He gasped for breath, lungs suddenly starving for oxygen and throat horrendously dry. "I'm—I'm sorry."

"You're sorry," Riku repeated.

"I am," Sora said. "I am, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"Sorry," Riku whispered.

"I'm sorry," Sora cried, and now his eyes were burning, and now his throat was tight. He shoved the heels of his palms against his eyes, tried to speak without letting the words crack on every vowel. "I'm sorry. I don't need you to forgive me. I don't want you to forgive me. Please don't forgive me. But I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Please. Don't stay with her. You're so much better than all of us. Please. I'm sorry. You have to know. "

He might have continued, but his throat had finally given out on him, and he could no longer force his tongue to form words.

He stood there, eyelids squeezed tight with the force with which he would not let himself cry. Before him, Riku was looking at him. Sora had been able to feel the weight of his gaze since the beginning; he'd have known if Riku had stopped. He wanted to run from the impossibility of that stare. But that would be denying Riku's right to ruin him. Even he couldn't possibly be so weak.

 _Open your eyes,_ he thought.

He didn't.

Riku's hand descended once more.

It had fallen on his cheek this time, the palm clammy and terribly cold where it sat nestled against the fever-hot burn of Sora's jaw. The fingertips massaged at the place where his ear met his face. The thumb rubbed lightly at the indent under Sora's eyes. Dark circles had blossomed there over the last few days, unhealthy and purple. No one had commented on them yet. Sora had been taking very careful pains to make sure no one, least of all his family, had gotten a good enough look to be able to tell.

He opened his eyes.

Riku stood before him now. His eyes were hard green stones.

"Do you feel better?" he asked.

Sora bit hard at the inside of his mouth. He didn't let himself move.

"I think I hoped you would," Riku said. "That was the only reason I could see for you coming here, to try to feel better. You had to have known I wouldn't really be able to respond."

It was good that he felt like this. Guilt this terrible had to be good.

Riku leaned forward. "Answer me," he said. "Do you feel better?"

"No," Sora said.

Riku said, "Good."

And then in the distance something very large went _bang_.

The sound was disorienting, the sort of noise that only occurred in the wake of catastrophes and wars, loud and horrible and huge. He jerked hard enough to dislodge Riku's hand, spinning on his heel and trying to find the source of the noise. For a moment there was nothing—plants, houses, trees. And then, blurred through the glass walls of the greenhouse and the dark of rapidly descending night, he thought he saw something glow red.

His body realized it first. Sora would remember that in the coming weeks, when he thought about what had happened on this day. He wouldn't be able to remember actually thinking anything. He hadn't felt anything in the way of emotions. There hadn't been horror, there hadn't been fear. But he'd remember the bottom dropping out of the pit of his stomach, something akin to ice taking over the finger-ends of his veins. And he'd remember walking forward.

There was a door at the back of the greenhouse, opposite the one that connected the edifice to Maleficent's home. It was unlocked. There would be time to question that later; why Maleficent had left the door to something as important as her plants free for the world to open. At the moment, Sora's mind was blank. Of course the door unlocked beneath his hands. There was something happening in the distance. Sora needed to know.

It opened. Sora stepped through.

The houses of the street Maleficent lived on were as they had always been. There was nothing wrong with their faces, there was nothing wrong with their yards. But people were pouring out of them in pajamas and sweatpants and bathrobes, with identical expressions of confusion, identical angry shouts. They were turning. They were looking at something that looked as if it were coming from ten roads down.

Smoke was rising above the tops of the houses in thick dark bands that spluttered and sparked.

Sora's first thought was it might be a campfire.

But his second thought was _no_.

"Mom," he said. He took a step, stumbled, pulled himself up on feet that no longer seemed to know how to hold his weight. "Mom!"

Riku caught him by the arm. Sora lashed out before he could put a thought process to the action, missing him by millimeters, trying again. "What did you do?" he screamed. "My mom!"

Riku didn't answer immediately. His fingers were a vice around Sora's arm. Sora wrapped his own around them, pulling at them with hands that had suddenly gone senseless and cold. Riku didn't appear to notice. Sora still couldn't recognize whatever expression had gotten caught around his eyes.

"Calm down," Riku said. "It's not your house."

For an instant, Sora didn't understand the words that had come out of Riku's mouth. And then his legs gave out.

He lost the next few seconds to confusion; he lost the following few to the strangling desire to faint. Relief like he'd never felt went sweeping through him, turning limbs that only a half minute ago had been nerveless into something that felt even more like mush. He opened his mouth a few times, but nothing seemed to emerge no matter how hard he tried. There were spots dancing in the corner of his vision. It took him a full minute before they finally disappeared.

"Oh," he said, tongue sluggish and heavy. "Then...we need to do something. Call the police. We have to help."

"You don't need to worry about that," Riku said. "It's not your house."

"That doesn't matter," Sora said dimly. Riku's face had gone blurred before him. He looked away, less because he wanted to than because his brain wasn't working properly and his eyes made the decision on their own. "There could be people hurt." The streets had emptied around them, people trying to get closer to the location of the blast, or disappearing back inside their houses once they'd realized that the smoke was coming from somewhere too far away to affect them. "Sometimes no one calls for the fire department or police." Maleficent was still standing inside the greenhouse. He didn't think her eyes had left him from the moment Riku had come through the door. "We need to help. We have to go."

Riku pulled him up.

Sora's knees were still wobbly, the joints distant and faraway, and his brain had still not caught up with the reality of his surroundings, so he hadn't noticed the fact that in the last few minutes his legs had once again begun to bend. But Riku's hand squeezed around his forearm, and it pulled him almost straight, and the eyes that had begun to slowly fall farther away suddenly seemed quite close.

"Maybe I should be clearer," Riku said, voice like stones. "It's not your house. It's mine."

The floor really did fall out from under him then.

The emotion he felt was different than the one that had come over him moments ago, when he'd first heard the impossible destructiveness of that _bang_. Back then there had been horror, and certainty, and rage. This was softer than his previous feelings had been, more like incomprehension than anything else.

His first try at speaking ended with a small, confused sound. His second worked out marginally better.

"What," he said, swallowing. "What are you talking about?"

"Exactly what you think I'm talking about," Riku said. "That explosion didn't take place at your home. Your home is fine. All that smoke? That's from the Leonhart house."

"That doesn't make sense," Sora said. "Why are you still here? Why did your house explode?"

"Because your family wanted it to," Riku said. "And if there's anything this city has learned in the last month, it's that what the Strife family wants, it gets."

For the third time that day, Sora heard something and did not at all understand.

"I," Sora said. "I don't think I know what you're talking about."

"You're not stupid, Sora," Riku said. "You know what I mean."

"I don't," Sora said. "I think you're—misunderstanding something. We haven't done anything like that. We'd never do anything that could—that could end with you hurt."

"Maybe not," Riku admitted. "But you don't need to do something on purpose for it to have unforeseeable repercussions, and given how much of a hard-on you've had for our downfall over the last month, I don't think anyone's going to have a problem believing that all this was was the Strife family's final prank."

"But we didn't," Sora said. "We'd never. It wasn't us."

"Sure you did," Riku said. "There's evidence all over your room."

Which was about the moment that the denial Sora had been clinging to shattered in the wind.

He looked at Riku. At the cold green flints in his eyes; at the long straight line of his nose; at the way his lips were paler than Sora remembered, thinner, all of his quick, easy smiles replaced with something that didn't look as if it were inclined to smile much at all. Last week, there had been weight on Riku's shoulders, there had been lines between his brows. But there had also been fierce, incandescent anger, and fiercer, more incandescent joy. The person standing in front of him was different. Sora didn't recognize him at all.

"You did this?" Sora asked, and he didn't even notice that this time his voice cracked. "You destroyed your house?"

"Not all of it," Riku said. "But yeah."

Sora didn't know him.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Riku said, voice echoing oddly in a way that could have been acoustics but was more likely the blood thumping in Sora's ears. "The explosion, I mean. It wasn't actually that large. We planned it—she planned it—to give the appearance of destruction more than any actuality. Chemistry. You can do that."

Maleficent was staring at him. Why wouldn't she stop.

"The living room will have to be rebuilt," Riku said quietly, faraway. "The entire backyard. We set it up as well as we could to make sure it wouldn't touch your house. It's going to be a wreck. But that's what insurance is for. The explosion was contained. My family's out. No one was hurt. And someone called the police about the possibility of an accident on our street a while ago. Everything is fine. It all actually turned out relatively neat."

Her smile was a knife.

"You destroyed your home," Sora whispered, the words a breath.

"Yes," Riku said. "I did."

"You wanted to frame us," Sora continued. "You wanted to make sure you could win."

"Yes," Riku said again. "I did."

"You planted an explosive in your own family's home," Sora said. "Because I hurt you, and you thought that destroying something your parents had worked for would be the best way to get to me."

For an instant, he thought something strange passed over Riku's face. "Yes," Riku said for a final time. "I did."

Sora stared at the impossibility in front of him. And then he screamed.

"Tifa loves you!" he shouted. He jerked out of Riku's grip, shoved himself away. "Your family loves you!"

Riku's hands dropped to his sides, expression still impassive. He didn't reply.

"Your mother, your brother, your family," Sora continued, hands twisting in the air, wanting with a force he almost couldn't contain to hit something, hurt himself. "Your family. Your pets, your things, your home, your home." Riku's expression wouldn't twitch, his face wouldn't move.

"And you destroyed it for this?" Sora shouted. "They could have died! They might have died! Your family is half a mile away, and they could be dead, and you're standing here talking to me, you risked them for this?"

The same odd flash of expression shot over Riku's face before it dissolved. "My brother is with yours. My parents are out."

"How do you know? Did you check? Did you go there before you came? Demyx and Zexion showed up hours ago. Did you see them leave?"

"Maleficent bugged our homes weeks ago," Riku said. "If she said my house was empty, it's because it was."

" _What makes you think you can trust her?_ " Sora screamed. "You don't know her! You don't know anything about her! One week ago we thought she was normal, and now look at what she is! If she said your house was empty, it's because that's what she decided to tell you, and you'll never know whether she's telling the truth unless you go and look for yourself. What makes you think she'd stop at property damage if manslaughter would give her a better result? What kind of arrogance makes you think she actually obeyed your word!?"

Riku's face was still frozen into a blank, indifferent mask. But there was a tightness around his mouth that hadn't been there five minutes ago, and his hands had started to tremble.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said, voice low. "You don't know anything."

"I know that you were willing to risk your family's lives on how much you hated me," Sora said, trembling just as hard. "But that's not something I can afford."

He spun. He started to take off down the street.

Riku caught him by the shoulder and twisted him around.

It wasn't that Sora didn't see that Riku was going to hit him. It wasn't even that Sora's body had spent the last fifteen minutes bursting with fear and guilt, and that in a deep part of himself he almost wanted it to happen, although that was partly true. It was only that Sora'd never had occasion to fight him before. He hadn't realized Riku could be so fast.

Riku's white-knuckled fist flew at his nose.

Sora watched it happen in slow-motion.

And then someone entered his periphery, and a hand caught Riku's fist in midair.

For a split second, Sora did not move. Then, entirely on its own, his head turned.

Demyx was standing there. There was a look on his face that Sora had only seen once before, on the day their father had said he would leave. Roxas had stared at his parents. So had Sora. But then he'd looked at Demyx, and in the instant before Demyx had noticed the attention there had been a look on his face as if he wanted no more than for the person sitting in front of him to die.

Demyx was standing there, gaze locked on Riku. And that was the look in his eyes.

For one moment, no one moved.

And then Demyx tightened his grip on Riku's fist in one sharp, deft movement, and held on tight, and then punched him in the face.

The world behind Sora went still.

And then Demyx and Riku were on the floor, fists everywhere, tearing and biting and clawing at each other like animals, or monsters, mouths and noses blossoming red. In the distance Sora thought he heard someone shouting, Zexion shouting ( _hadn't seen him, hadn't noticed he was there_ ), but the voice was faraway and unimportant, Sora couldn't care. He said something, couldn't remember what; tried to move forward, couldn't manipulate his legs. Demyx and Riku were rolling now, knuckles making sick sounds against bone. Sora couldn't figure out how that had happened. He didn't—

No.

He surged towards them, heart strangling his throat, grabbing Demyx by the shoulder and wrenching him up. Demyx shoved him off; Sora grabbed tighter this time, under Demyx's shoulders and then around his neck, pulling him away, forcing him backward no matter how hard Demyx fought.

"Stop it," he said, almost breathless. "Demyx, no."

"Fuck you," Demyx said.

Sora flinched; almost lost his grip on him; flinched harder because Demyx was digging his nails hard into Sora's forearm, was still trying to yank himself away. Sora bit at his tongue hard, then gasped to try and pull in air in a world that had suddenly gone suffocatingly sharp. "Stop," he said again. "No."

"Fuck you," Demyx said. "Fuck you."

"Demyx."

"Fuck you," Demyx said. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you—"

"Stop!"

" _Fuck you_ ," Demyx shouted. " _Fuck you, you piece of shit, fuck you!_ "

Riku had pulled himself to his feet sometime in the last minute, had taken a step back. There was smeared blood on his cheeks, jaw, nose. The moment the last word had exited Demyx's mouth, though, Riku snapped forward and snarled. Zexion caught him before he'd made it a step, as suddenly as Demyx had, one arm around Riku's collarbone, the other around his waist, heaving him back the way Demyx was trying to heave himself forward.

"Let go of him," Demyx said, and with both pairs faced against each other it was impossible for Sora to miss the way the line of Zexion's shoulders went infinitesimally stiff. "Let go, get off, piece of filth, piece of shit."

"Demyx," Sora and Zexion said.

" _I'll kill you,_ " Demyx shouted, and there was blood on his face and blood on his mouth and Sora pressed his face tight between Demyx's shoulder blades and wrapped his arms around his waist and held on. "Look at him! Look at what he did, look at what he's done. You don't get to touch him, fucker, asshole, you don't get to lay a single hand on my family. Let go, let go!"

Again, whispered between Demyx's shoulders and snapped ten feet away: " _Demyx._ "

"He's not your brother," Demyx screamed. Sora didn't have to be looking at them to see the way both Zexion and Riku froze. "He's not your family, he's not your anything, he's pathetic, he's disgusting, he's low—" And he was snarling the words and spitting the words and Sora should never have done this, should have known the risk of pulling Demyx into this with them when Demyx was a pacifist and Demyx was a coward and the wells of Demyx's hatred ran so deep Sora had never wanted to know. "I can't believe you can bear to stand next to him, I can't believe you can stand sharing the same air—"

"You're going to be quiet," Zexion said, soft.

" _Fuck you!_ " Demyx screamed. Don't let go; no matter how hard Demyx fought, Sora couldn't let him go. "Fuck you, you piece of shit, you don't get to tell me to be quiet after all of this, you don't get to take his side after what he's done."

"What your brothers have done," Zexion said.

Demyx almost broke out of Sora's grip then.

"My brothers didn't just blow up your house an hour after we stepped out of it," Demyx roared. "My brothers didn't frame someone else for a fucking felony because their feelings got hurt, weak, pathetic sack of shit—" ( _Didn't know who Demyx was even talking to anymore, couldn't see who he was looking at when it was taking so much effort just to keep him from breaking free_ ) "—what made you think you could act as you wanted, what made you think a single person cared—"

"Your brothers spent the last month piling this staggering heap of excrement higher and higher," Zexion said. "Every time someone wanted to stop, every time one of them tried to apologize, your brothers barreled forward, because they thought they could get away with it, because they never paused to consider how those around them would react. How far do you think you can push someone before they react? They did this to themselves. They—"

Demyx rammed his elbow into Sora's gut.

Sora doubled over.

And then there was a slam, and Demyx and Zexion were both on the ground.

And the edges of his vision had gone dark, and his stomach felt as if a sledgehammer had crashed into it, but Sora stumbled forward anyway, trying to cross the distance between them. He didn't know how this had happened. He couldn't remember where exactly everything had gone entirely wrong. Demyx couldn't be doing this. Zexion couldn't be doing this. Zack's house—the Leonhart house—it couldn't be on fire, it couldn't have been destroyed. All of this was ridiculous. Two days ago they'd still been having fun. Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe Riku was—

Riku—

Riku was standing.

He lifted his eyes to Sora's.

And then, for the second time that evening, something huge and horrible went _bang._

Every person on the sidewalk froze.

Very slowly, Sora lifted his eyes once again.

Half a mile away, right beside the lingering tongues of fire and the clouds of smoke, still burning but lower now, something else began to blaze. The flames looked taller than the previous ones had. There were thick black plumes of smoke winding up into the sky, dark and terrible and shot through with fleck of orange and red. It was the sort of fire that could swallow up whole buildings. It looked like the sort of thing you never saw out of films.

Sora stared at it the impossibility of it. He realized that there was no way this could be anything but a dream.

Hands fell atop his shoulders. Vaguely, he was aware that Demyx and Zexion and Riku—Riku, tall, bloody, inexplicable cell phone in hand—were staring at him. At the person standing behind him. At the long black wisps of hair escaping Maleficent's bun and falling against Sora's face.

Black nails dug into his collar. And a low, lovely voice said, "with so much at stake, did any of you actually believe I would stop at just one."

In the periphery of his vision, he saw their three faces grow white and cold. In the periphery of his vision, he saw them all step forward.

"Mom," Sora said, and shot past them all.

He didn't know whether any of them followed him. It was the sort of detail he would have cared about, if he were in the position to care about anything other than the fact that smoke was rising in the distance, and that that smoke was half a mile away; he would have told Demyx to stay, he would have told him to find Roxas and keep him away. But half a mile meant ten blocks, and ten blocks meant time, and in his head all he could see was a running loop of his mother stumbling inside the house hours ago, tired and worn. She'd been so listless. All Sora had wanted in that moment was to fix things so that he'd be able to put it all behind him and concentrate on his family, and friends, and home.

He had no idea how long it took, or whether the amount of time was longer or shorter than the eternity it had felt. But finally his street rose up before him. He stopped.

There were a hundred people clustered together behind trucks and cars, staring at the two burning houses. There were neighbors shouting, motioning to each other. And before them all was his home.

The Leonhart house looked almost as Riku had said it would. Half of the righthand side had been mostly destroyed; there was debris everywhere, boards and bricks and pieces of broken furniture. But it looked like it could be rebuilt.

The Strife house could not.

Baby books. Photo albums. The pictures he'd had of his father, buried deep in his closet where his brothers would never have to know. He'd held them close to his heart once. He'd stay up late into the night looking at them, again and again, for hours, under the covers where Demyx couldn't tease him and Roxas couldn't see. Memories were important. Nothing had been more beloved to him.

His mother had walked in.

"Mom," he said. "M...mom."

He pushed into the crowd of people, into neighbors and acquaintances and people he'd only ever seen in the grocery store, slowly at first, as if in a daze. Vaguely he was aware of people looking at him; of people answering the question he kept asking as seconds passed and he still did not see his mother. But with each person who said _no_ the dim, dull static in his head grew louder and louder, until he wasn't walking anymore, he was running, and he wasn't asking, he was only shouting her name.

And then he'd made it through the crowd, and the only thing that stood between him and his mother were the neighbors, and they weren't paying attention.

Before the roar of fire around him cancelled out every other sound, he thought he heard Roxas screaming his name. But he might have been imagining it.

Leonhart Explosion: T-minus 5 minutes.

Roxas didn't know.

Half a mile away, Sora was apologizing. A quarter of a mile away, Zexion and Demyx were trying to find Sora. Somewhere across the city, Cloud was dealing with things Roxas would probably never know about, and wasn't sure he'd ever want to. Roxas didn't know. A long time ago, someone had told Roxas that the fact that he so often found himself unaware of what his loved ones were doing was possibly his fault. But that wasn't a helpful thing to be thinking right now. It wouldn't do him any good.

There were two calls in his recent phone history. The first had taken place ten minutes ago, and had been to his mother. The second had taken place five minutes later, and had been to Kairi. Neither had accomplished much of anything except to make his heart rise further into his throat. The latter had led him here, though.

It would be fine.

Roxas pushed his phone into a pocket and wiped his hands on his pants. He knocked on the door in front of him. He waited. Footsteps came towards him.

Axel opened it.

There was a split second when Axel came into view where he looked tired; another split second where he looked surprised. There were dark circles under his eyes; the muscles of his face looked slack, like he hadn't been using them properly. But the moment Axel realized who was waiting for him on the opposite side of the door both the listless expression and the shocked one disappeared, and all that was left was Axel looking at him as if he didn't care who Roxas was at all.

"Kairi's not here," he said. "Next time you decide to show up unannounced, try calling her first."

"Where's Sora?" Roxas asked.

That apparently wasn't the response Axel had been expecting. "Yeah," he said, when the swift, confusing mix of emotions had finally left his face. "You can leave."

Roxas placed his palm on the door. "Tell me where he is."

"In case you haven't noticed," Axel said, "the four of us aren't exactly on speaking terms. Or being able to exist in the same hundred meter radius without possibly causing mass property damage and at least three misdemeanors terms." He shrugged, turned away. "How should I know where your brother is?"

"Because the two of you have been talking ever since the day we got stranded," Roxas said. "And I know you're the one who helped him with what he just did."

Axel had been faced away, expression a mask of absolute indifference, when Roxas spoke. It meant that Roxas didn't have a good view of his face. But when Axel finally turned back to him, the motion was slow, and the indifference looked a lot more like anger.

"What do you think he just did?" Axel asked.

"Don't play stupid," Roxas said. "It's all over the news."

"The only thing that's all over the news is the downfall of half of R.G.'s aristocracy," Axel said in a careless drawl. "And unless your bro's a little more of a vigilante than I thought he was, I don't see how—"

"Stop," Roxas shouted. "Stop. I know my brother. I know who he is. And he never would have stood for the things they did. He would have taken them all down, for him, for you, for me. And Demyx never knows anything and Kairi wouldn't have gone along with it without first coming up with a plan, and that means that the only person he could have come to is you. Don't do that. Don't lie to me."

Axel didn't respond immediately. For a long time, Axel didn't do much of anything except watch him with a careful intensity Roxas hadn't felt since the day at the restaurant. An hour ago, that might have bothered him. But right now his stomach was rolling, and his hands were clenching, and all he wanted was to find Sora. Things would be all right if only he could just find his brother.

"He's with Maleficent," Axel said.

Roxas went still.

Then he swore and took off.

Axel caught him before he'd made it off the porch, spinning him around by the shoulders. Roxas shoved at him. "Stop," he said. "I need to help him. I need to—"

"What are you going to do?"

Roxas went still. Axel's hands on his shoulders tightened. The motion didn't feel purposeful. Axel's eyes didn't look purposeful. They looked angry in a way Roxas didn't think he'd ever seen before, furious and right _there_. For possibly the first time since Roxas had met him, he did not think that Axel was keeping a single part of himself reserved.

"Maleficent's there," Axel continued. "Sora's there, and if what Kairi just told me is true then Riku's probably there, and that's a damn catastrophe, all right?" He crowded Roxas against the wall. "Any two of them alone would be a disaster. The three of them are going to be a fucking _catastrophe_. What are you going to do when you show up? Start hitting people until they listen to you? How do you think that's going to work?"

Roxas shook his head in what was as much a denial as a response. "It doesn't matter," he hissed. "He's my brother."

"In case you haven't noticed," Axel said, "being your brother hasn't been doing him any favors lately, and until you can get your head far enough out of your ass to realize that your own self-satisfaction isn't more important than what he needs, all you're going to do is fuck everything up."

Roxas could feel the blood draining slowly out of his face. "Shut up."

"I'll shut up when you can manage a single coherent thought," Axel said. "What are you going to do when you show up? How are you going to make this any better?"

"It doesn't need to be better," Roxas said, trembling. "I don't care if it gets better."

"Well, your brother does," Axel said. "And given that he's been doing this all for the express purpose of ensuring it gets better, I don't think he's going to thank you if you show up and risk it all just because you want to keep his feelings safe."

Roxas possibly would have answered just then. But that was when the Leonhart household exploded.

Both Axel and Roxas stood stock still for a single heartbeat. Then they both shot for the road.

They sprinted toward the fire as quickly as they could, foregoing the sidewalks and streets because sidewalks and streets would take too fucking long. They shot through the yards that didn't have fences; climbed over the ones that did. And then their road opened up before them, and their houses on their little cul-de-sac, and both boys came to a halt.

"What," Roxas whispered. "Wh...what?"

Axel took a step back. "No."

"That's Riku's house," Roxas said. "That's his..."

"No," Axel said again. "No, no, no."

It was difficult to get close. The streets had filled up with people, with everyone who lived on their road it looked like, and the flames were growing large enough that Roxas wouldn't have been able to get through even if he'd wanted to.

It wasn't as bad as it could have been. The fire hadn't yet reached either of the houses that bordered it. Even the entire house hadn't caught yet, it seemed. But the whole first floor looked as if it were ablaze, and every time the flames flickered Roxas realized that the walls had been wrecked, and Roxas could see inside. Someone on the second floor might have survived. Someone on the first floor would not have.

Roxas fumbled his phone out of his pocket. "Police," he said, eyes locked on the flames dancing around the lower level of the Leonhart house. "You...you have to call the police."

Axel obeyed. Roxas turned his phone on. He scrolled to _D_.

"Pick up," he said.

The phone continued to ring.

"Come on," he said. He paced from one end of the driveway to the other, spare hand buried in his hair. "Pick up, come on, come on, please, pick up."

 _Ring. Ring._

" _Fuck you,_ " he screamed. " _Pick up!_ "

 _Hey,_ the answering machine said. _You've reached Demyx_ —

Roxas hung up. He dialed the next number. This one answered on the third ring.

"Mom," he said. "Mom?"

"Baby," Rinoa said. "Did you need something?"

Roxas made a small noise in his throat, pushing the heel of his palm against his eye. "N...no. No. Are you all right?"

"What?" Rinoa asked. "Yes, of course. I'm on my way to Radiant Garden with Tifa. I'm still looking for Sora. Baby, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," Roxas said immediately. He scrunched his face up tightly, did not think of what he would have to do to make this go away. "Noth—I'll call you back, okay?"

Rinoa's voice was beginning to grow concerned. "Roxas," she said. "Please. Tell me what's—"

"Nothing," he said. "I swear. I'll call you back."

"Roxas—"

He hung up. Behind him, more and more people were filling up the street, whispering and murmuring and saying things that began with _Do you think this had to do with their w_ —? He couldn't think about that. He couldn't—

"Zexion," he said.

Axel was still standing beside him, looking at him with an expression Roxas wouldn't have been able to parse on a good day, much less when the Leonhart household was burning up in front of him and the last time Roxas had seen Demyx he'd been walking in. "What?" Axel asked.

"Zexion," Roxas said again. "He and Demyx were together earlier. I need—I need Zexion. His phone number. I need to talk to Zexion."

"He wasn't in the house," Axel said.

"I know," Roxas said. "Of course they weren't. I just need to talk to Zexion."

Axel lifted his phone wordlessly. Roxas snatched it out of his hand and dialed.

It rang. And rang. And rang. Roxas bit his tongue to keep in the scream.

And then the phone went click, and he heard someone speak.

"Zexion," Roxas said, voice a gasp. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. "Zexion?"

A pause. And then Riku said, "Roxas."

Roxas recoiled, grip going loose. He caught himself before he dropped it; lifted the phone, trembling, back to his mouth.

"Give the phone to Demyx."

There were shouts in the call's background. No matter how hard he tried to listen closely, he couldn't identify the voice.

"Sorry," Riku said, after a pause. "Your brother's occupied right now."

"Stop it," Roxas said. "Give it—give it to Demyx."

"Occupied," Riku said again. "Busy. Unavailable. Not going to pick up."

"Fuck you," Roxas shouted. "Give the phone to Demyx!"

Quiet. In the background of the phone, two voices roared.

And then his house exploded.

They'd been far enough that any debris landed safely dozens of feet away. On the news later, they'd see reports of bruises and scrapes, but no one was really hurt.

But his house was still on fire. The entire thing had begun to burn.

Roxas took a slow, stumbling step forward. "No," he said. He took another, catching himself when his left leg collapsed. "No."

Axel caught him around the waist, as if he thought Roxas was going to go in. Maybe Roxas would have gone in. He couldn't remember whether he'd intended to go in. "Stop," Axel said. "Shit, shit, don't."

"My house," Roxas said. "It's—no."

"Don't look," Axel said. "Come on Roxas. Don't look at that, come on, let's go."

"Demyx just bought a new sitar," Roxas said numbly. "Mom—our things. Oh. Our books."

"No one was in there," Axel said. His voice sounded weird. Like it was going to crack. Like it was also going to burn. "It's going to be all right."

"What happened?" Roxas asked.

Axel said, "Come on, Roxas, baby. Please. I don't know."

Maybe Roxas kept asking questions after that. He wouldn't be able to remember later; everything went a little hazy after that first minute, continued being hazy as Axel led him away from his house on fire and the people who parted before him with their huge, shocked eyes.

His limbs weren't wobbly. The initial physical disorientation had faded. The mental disorientation was still very much present, of course, but his body didn't feel weak. His pulse felt steady and sound—steadier than Axel's felt. Axel's face was white, and Roxas could feel his fingers trembling where they were wrapped around Roxas's wrist. It worried him.

"I'm fine," he said finally. "Let go."

Axel didn't immediately. Roxas tugged at his hand—not hard enough to dislodge him, but firmly enough that Axel could tell what he was trying to do. Axel released him as if Roxas's hand were on fire. "Sorry," he said. "Sorry."

"Why are you apologizing?" Roxas asked. "I'm fine."

"You're not."

"I'm fine," Roxas said. "I need my brothers."

"Fuck," Axel said.

"That's not a relevant response," Roxas said. "I need—" He swallowed, took a step farther down the road. "Riku wouldn't tell me if Demyx was there. I heard people shouting. I heard—lots of things. But I don't know if it was Demyx. It could have been—"

"Riku answered Zexion's phone?"

"I dialed the right one," Roxas said. "I checked. I wouldn't have accidentally called him."

"I didn't think you had," Axel said. "Riku answered Zexion's phone?"

"That's what I said," Roxas said. He didn't sound angry. He wondered why he didn't sound angry. He wondered why he didn't feel angry. His house had just blown up. He needed to feel angry. "He picked up. I don't know where they are. I need my—"

"Fuck," Axel said. His arms had suddenly shot around Roxas's waist. Lucky; Roxas's legs had once again seemed like they were going to fail. "I'll take you home, okay? You need to rest. You need to lie down."

"I need my brothers," Roxas said. "Demyx was in there. Demyx was in their home. Demyx isn't answering, and Riku wouldn't let me speak to him, and I swear to you on everything I am that if anything is wrong with them I will kill him, he will—"

Demyx slammed into him.

Roxas stumbled back under the weight, feet half-slipping from under him before Axel caught him by the arm and forced him again upright. The desire to tell him to back off came, left. Demyx was there. Of course he was. Roxas would have been able to feel it if anything had happened to his family. He'd known Demyx would be okay. How could he not have been? It was Demyx.

Demyx, who was grabbing at his shoulders now, face bruised blue. Behind him, Roxas saw Zexion. Further away, he saw Riku. The ash-white of their cheeks came in triplicate. So did the blood on their mouths. All three of them were sporting bruises that would probably only grow darker in the next few hours. All three of them looked as if they'd been in a rather large fight. But Zexion was unimportant and Roxas couldn't think of Riku when Demyx was standing in front of him, wearing an expression of open, desperate panic that Roxas had never seen before. There was horror there. Roxas's hadn't known that Demyx's emotions ran honest enough to actually know how horror felt.

"Mom," Demyx said. "Where's Mom?"

"What?" Roxas asked.

"Mom," Demyx said, louder now. "Where's my mom?"

Demyx's face was white.

There was something sick about how much stronger Roxaas felt just because Demyx's face was white.

"Mom's fine," Roxas said, and his voice was still hollow and distant, but it wasn't shaking anymore, he could be strong for his brother. "She wasn't there."

"She's fine?"

"Yes," Roxas said. "She's halfway to Hollow Bastion. We've all been looking for Sora. Everyone is fine."

Demyx's face didn't regain any color. _The house,_ Roxas told himself belatedly. _He's probably just seen the house._

" _Everything's_ fine," he said, in a correction, or an elaboration, or just to press the point. "Cloud has insurance. Mom has insurance. Everything will be good."

Demyx opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

"We can replace the rest of it," Roxas continued. "We can deal with whatever people say. I was going to get a job anyway. I'll get you more instruments. It'll be okay."

Demyx kept growing paler. Roxas thought he could see him sway.

"Please don't break down," Roxas whispered. "I don't want you to make that face."

But that wasn't the problem, and there was a limit to how much Roxas could lie to himself.

Demyx took a long, shuddering breath. His eyes were painfully wide. "Where did Sora go?"

Roxas had been mildly lightheaded from the moment he'd realized that his neighbor's house was on fire, and the last time he'd seen his oldest brother had been when he was right about to walk through those doors. So his face didn't go whiter than it had already gone, and he didn't lose any further sensation in his limbs. But his heart began pounding again. Strange; up to that point it had sounded quite thin.

"What?" he asked.

"Sora," Demyx said. "You have to have seen him. He came this way."

"I didn't," Roxas said. "I don't know."

"You have to know," Demyx said, louder this time, hands rough enough to bruise. Axel was making noises behind him, sounds, but if the vocalizations were words they were too peripheral for Roxas to understand. "He was right here."

"I don't know," Roxas shouted. "I thought you were dead. I thought you were in there. I told you that Cloud was in our house, I told you not to go in. You were gone. I didn't—"

"Roxas," Axel said.

Roxas's mouth snapped shut. His fingers came up to squeeze reflexively around the hand still wrapped around his arm.

Demyx was so white he looked like he would pass out. Behind him, Zexion was staring at him with bruised, purple eyes. Further behind, so was Riku. It was a good thing Axel was currently behind him, warm against his back but out of Roxas's line of sight; Roxas didn't think he'd be able to handle Axel looking at him like that, too.

"Where's my brother?" Roxas asked.

Demyx opened his mouth.

Riku shot past.

Roxas turned after him, staring blankly as Riku ran past them, in the direction of their houses. Somewhere behind him, Zexion made an aborted noise and took off after. Demyx didn't. Demyx looked as if he'd collapse if he took another step.

"He didn't know," Demyx said. "I didn't know. Everyone is doing whatever the fuck they want, no one knows what's going on. But the moment Sora saw the second explosion he took off."

Axel's grip on his arm was very welcome.

"I think he thought Mom was in there," Demyx said. "I think he wanted to—"

The word Demyx had been going to say was _go_. But Roxas had yanked his arm out of Axel's hand halfway through Demyx's first sentence, and by the time Demyx finished Roxas had run far enough that he could no longer hear the words.

He made it to the houses only a few seconds after Zexion did. Riku had disappeared somewhere. To Hollow Bastion, maybe. Away from the crowd. But both of them were inconsequential because neither of them was Sora, who couldn't be far ahead of them; the conversation with Demyx seemed as if had lasted forever, but they'd both been rushing over their words, and in the end it couldn't have amounted to more than a minute. Roxas could find him. Sora was here.

"Sora," he said. "Sora!"

Sora, who didn't answer, who was still no where to be found, so Roxas kept calling out his name, kept looking—saw the large tree halfway down the block, with its low-hanging limbs and ran toward it, climbing up the first branch and to the second, third, until he was high enough to overlook the crowd and search, and search—

Movement, too quick for his eyes to properly follow, near the line of watchers.

Roxas turned.

A boy ran past them, through the line of people who only realized what he was trying to do when it was too late. He had wild, brown hair.

Very loudly, Roxas screamed.


	22. Chapter 20: Just Stop

**Disclaimer:** still not mine

 **Author's Notes:** seven years later, i still feel disclaimers are redundant; "canon is almost as ridiculous," i remind myself as i cry while writing this story, "lots of things in canon also don't make sense;" all that's left is an epilogue. an epilogue that's basically as long as this chapter, but an epilogue nonetheless.

 **Warnings:** for coercion, drugging, abuse, past statutory rape, emotional manipulation, and assault. again, there is no sex, but there is definitely a sexual element in the sephiroth scenes below. if you're at all uncomfortable with that, please run them by a pre-reader or skip those scenes entirely.

* * *

 **Chapter Twenty: Just Stop**

The drive lasted a little under half an hour. Cloud kept his eyes pinned on the windshield the entire time, less out of a desire not to look at Sephiroth and more because his head was frozen, and had been frozen since the moment he saw Sephiroth on his porch. The buildings outside grew larger and more cluttered. The further they drifted from Radiant Garden, the more packed the streets began to grow. Ambulances whizzed opposite them. Cloud didn't notice.

 _Get out,_ Cloud told himself. _You're not trying hard enough. Everything would be all right if you could only just get out._

His thoughts remained frozen, and his body was still stiff.

Sephiroth pulled into a parking lot a few minutes later. He climbed out of the car, opening the door for Cloud and helping him outside with an arm around his waist. Cloud thought about telling him to get off; his mouth didn't move. His limbs had gone a little loose and foggy in the last few minutes, the way they did when he drank, or when he was tired enough for beer to actually take effect. Whatever had been in the drink Sephiroth had given him had apparently done its job; it was difficult to protest when it was all it he could do to think.

Sephiroth drew him through the parking lot, into the lobby of a large building that looked like a hotel except that Cloud would never follow Sephiroth into a hotel. They took the elevator up, and up, Sephiroth's hand on Cloud's waist for support the entire time, while Cloud stared dumbly at his reflection in the elevator's mirror and tried to make sense of time. Then it stopped, and Sephiroth pulled him out, and a door closed behind him into a dark, empty room.

He'd lost a few seconds. Something about that was wrong.

Sephiroth left him at the door, arm finally dropping from around Cloud's waist. He walked inside, toeing off his shoes and heading towards the kitchenette, bending to withdraw a bottle of water. "Would you like some?"

Cloud watched him, unmoving, back pressed against the door as if he would dissolve against it. Sephiroth raised his eyebrows, the line of his mouth going sharp and pleased before it quieted back into its polite curve. He walked forward, pressing his way into Cloud's personal space the way he'd pressed Cloud into the car—as if it was a foregone conclusion, as if he didn't even need to use force. "There's no point to simply standing there," he said. "You're not leaving yet, and I don't know how much longer your legs will stay strong. Come now. Let me help you sit."

Sephiroth took him by the hand before Cloud could say no. He said it anyway, mouth moving slowly over the word. Wasn't sure he managed it, actually; he couldn't hear himself, and Sephiroth wasn't giving him any indication that he noticed how hard Cloud was trying to pull back. Sephiroth wasn't giving him any indication that he noticed much of anything. He was sitting Cloud on the bed. He was smiling down.

"There," he said, quiet. "That feels better, doesn't it."

He stood, making his way back to the kitchenette while Cloud sat on the bed and tried to watch him, or tried to find the mental coherence to get away. Sephiroth walked to the refrigerator, grabbing a slim blue bottle and opening up the freezer to rummage around it. "You can sleep if you'd like," he said, sliding what looked like a tray of ice cubes onto the counter. "I know that this has probably been a trying day, and given that it's likely only to get more trying, it would be better if you conserved your energy. If you gave yourself time to work the sedative out of your body, as well. It won't last for more than a few hours, and it's not the strongest thing I could have given you, but you look like it did a number on you anyway."

Cloud sat motionless, hands folded in his lap because he was blearily aware he needed to keep them still.

Half an hour ago, he'd been at home. He'd been waiting for Leon. Leon had said he would stay the night.

With a tongue so thick he could hardly push words past it, he said, "What are you doing."

Sephiroth took hold of two tall glasses from the cabinet, pouring blocks of ice inside and grabbing from the counter what looked like juice. "I feel that what I'm doing is relatively self-evident," he said. "I took you from your home to mine, and now I'm fixing you a drink."

"No," Cloud said. "You're wrong."

"I didn't realize you knew more about my motives and intentions than I did," Sephiroth said. He shrugged, setting his bottles on the counter while he walked out of the kitchenette, a glass in one hand, and pulled up his hair. "Of course, that's always been one of your larger faults. You've never known how to really get out of your own head." He walked forward, smile wide and deceptive, nudging their noses together. "You're locked in there even now."

Leon was probably calling. He'd be wondering where Cloud went.

"A more relevant question," Sephiroth continued, "would be asking me _why_ I'm doing this. I could give you several applicable responses to that question. I could tell you that I grew tired of waiting outside your door while you hid inside like a frightened bird. I could tell you that I thought this would be the best way to get you to listen to me, and that, given your reaction, I rather believe I was right. I could even feed you a line about being jealous of your paramour and being unable to stand the thought of you giving him what you once gave me. But I think we both know that even you would be able to identify any one of those as an obvious lie."

Ten steps to the door. Thirty miles back to his house.

Sephiroth leaned forward, and placed the glass of wine on the bedside table, and kissed him, as slowly as he'd used to when Cloud had been thirteen. His breath was cool. His hair brushed Cloud's face the way it always had, soft and thin and it smelled so good, Sephiroth smelled so good, Cloud's stomach was rolling and his brain was burning and his heart was a vice and a lead and so thick in his throat he didn't know whether he wanted to vomit or scream. He wasn't this person. He'd never meant to be this person. All he'd ever wanted was to be strong for the people he needed to protect and he'd never realized that focusing so much on others meant that he'd never have enough strength to protect himself. He'd worked so hard to leave him. He'd sacrificed so, so much.

This was the truth:

Cloud had fallen in love with Sephiroth when he was too young to legally be able to act on it. He'd been a child; he'd been full of emotions and desires he hadn't entirely understood. He'd been old enough to know that he wanted him. He'd been old enough to know that there would be problems therein. He'd even been old enough (mature enough—that was better, wasn't it) to know that it was the sort of thing you kept secret, because Sephiroth could get in trouble, because people could find out. He'd known all of that.

He just hadn't quite understood that there were problems with the fact that Sephiroth had wanted him, too.

Cloud had wanted him. Love had been everything the storybooks had said it would be.

Concentrate. He had to take stock.

Fingers on his collar. A tongue in his mouth. Sephiroth kissing him, and kissing him, and kissing him, the way he'd kissed him when Cloud had been thirteen, slow and easy and always whenever Cloud tried to say something in protest. Somewhere, thirty miles away, Leon was looking for him. Tifa was in her home. Rinoa was in her room. His cousins were destroying public property, confident in the fact that no matter how badly they screwed up they would always have a place to call home, and Cloud had never begrudged them that confidence until now. He couldn't breathe. He was physically losing the ability to breathe.

He pulled away, struggling in earnest now, or whatever qualified as earnest when he was actually shaking like a leaf. Sephiroth kept hold of his shoulder, catching hold of the fist that Cloud swung at his face and then rolling them back, until Cloud was flat on his back and Sephiroth was above him and Cloud was thirteen and in love and terrified and had only just looked up at the man looming over him and realized for the first time that what Sephiroth was doing was wrong. He twisted under Sephiroth as roughly as he could. Sephiroth grabbed his shoulders even tighter and pressed them deep into the bed.

"Do you really think I care what you do with your lovers?" Sephiroth asked, quiet and content and a smile like moonshine. "You'll always be mine. You could have spent every night inviting random men and women into your bed and you'd still be mine. This has nothing to do with any of that, and the only reason you think it does is because you're so self-conscious and terrified that you've never realized it's impossible to lose something that will always belong to me."

"I don't care," Cloud said. "Fuck you. Fuck you. I don't care."

"Of course you do," Sephiroth said. "You care so much you're trembling."

"You can't do this," Cloud said. "You can't manipulate me into leaving a relationship."

Sephiroth laughed. "I'm not manipulating you at all. I'm saying that you don't have a relationship." His grin went wide and bright, the placid peace of it finally disappearing to something more like a knife. "Do you think I don't know about you?" The hands on Cloud's wrists squeezed. "You've spent every day of the last ten years trying to move past what we did. You've never been in a relationship that lasted more than three weeks. In the last decade you've slept with so few people I could probably count them on a hand and still have fingers left over, and it's not because you dislike it, it's not because you don't want to, it's because every time you touch a person the only one you see is me."

He felt dizzy. He felt as if he would die.

Sephiroth smiled again, indulgent and infinitely more gentle. "You don't have a relationship," he said. "You have an incubating dead-end. You are never going to love a person the way you love me. You're never going to need a person the way you need me. The only reason you haven't spent the last decade at my side is because the thought of that terrified you so much you needed to leave. Why would I need to push you into running from him? I am always going to be your life."

Cloud pushed hard at Sephiroth's grip on his arms. Sephiroth hands tightened, just for an instant. And then he used his grip on Cloud's wrist and his knees around Cloud's thighs to flip him over.

The mattress was soft, and Sephiroth hadn't moved roughly enough for Cloud to hurt himself. The move winded him anyway. He landed flat on his belly, face turned to the right. In the second it had taken Sephiroth to execute the move, he'd pulled both of Cloud's hands behind him, pressing them uncomfortably to the small of his back. Cloud bucked up as well as he could, but the flip had left him even dizzier than he'd been for the last half hour, and the simultaneous nausea and helpless panic left him so weak he could hardly push.

Sephiroth lowered himself onto him, using his own body weight to keep Cloud down. He shifted himself backward a bit, just enough to make sure Cloud's arm wouldn't strain but no where near enough that Cloud would be able to lever him off, and Cloud tried anyway but every time he did Sephiroth only pressed down further and did not let go. There were strands of long, white hair falling from Sephiroth's messy ponytail into Cloud's eyes. Sephiroth's voice, when he spoke, was very low.

"From the moment you saw me," he whispered, "you've been half-hard. You want me just as badly as you did ten years ago. You want me to ruin you just as badly as you did at thirteen. I could lock you here, away from your friends and your family, keep you in this room for the rest of your life and never let you out, and it would take you a week before you stopped fighting back. You want me. And the best proof of that is that this entire conversation has been entirely beside the point from the moment you first said _no_."

 _Leon,_ Cloud thought to himself, the name like a prayer. _Aerith, Tifa, Rinoa, Leon._

Quietly, the words like a suffocation, "Then what's...the point?"

Sephiroth smiled against the shell of his ear.

"The point is whatever nonsense your extended family has gotten into," Sephiroth said, "and the fact that as of—" he glanced up at the clock on the wall, "—roughly fifteen minutes ago, you no longer have a place to live."

Very few parts of this day had made sense. Leon loving him hadn't made sense. Leon wanting him hadn't made sense. But at least in the nightmare of Sephiroth-standing-before-him Cloud had been able to assign the situation some shred of sense. Sephiroth was what Cloud was more afraid of than anything else in the world; of course his existence made sense. _You no longer have a place to live_ did not.

"What are you talking about," he said.

"Many things," Sephiroth said. "But mostly I'm talking about the fact that Maleficent just used the youngest Leonhart as a cat's paw and engineered the destruction of both your houses."

Cloud went extremely still.

He had no idea how much time had passed since Sephiroth had taken him here. He knew it couldn't have been that long; psychological torture might seem as if it lasted hours, but their conversation had up to this point been comparatively short. In other words, whatever drug Sephiroth had force-fed him was still in his system, and he could therefore blame it on the way his field of vision went momentarily white.

He pressed his cheek into the mattress, focusing on his breaths until they grew steady enough that he could again talk. "You're lying."

Sephiroth pressed a kiss to the nape of Cloud's neck, smile wide against his skin. "Am I?"

"You're lying," Cloud said again, groggy and heavy. "You're confusing me. You're trying to make me stay."

"Why would I do that?" Sephiroth asked. "I don't need to. I told you before. I don't need to invest any sort of effort into you. You trap yourself here on your own. This has nothing to do with obsession or confusion or how much you hate and love me in turns. It's only that I wanted to get you out of the house somehow, and given how little time I had in order to manage that, I thought this would be the best way." And then his smile grew so wide that Cloud felt teeth.

"But," he said, and he climbed off him, pulling Cloud up with him and turning Cloud like a rag doll, until Cloud was sitting, back pressed to Sephiroth's chest, in his lap. "If you still don't believe me, I'll prove it."

There was a remote control on the bedside table. Sephiroth grabbed it, and turned on the news.

The first two channels were airing a story about the systematic and inexplicable downfall of a gambling syndicate.

The third one, though—

That one was about fire.

Cloud's mouth went slack.

People make decisions. It's simultaneously one of the greatest strengths and largest flaws of life—every move we make and every word we say will have a consequence, and because most humans are not gifted (or cursed, depending on the story) with precognition, we will never know whether the things we do and say will have a positive or negative effect until the world decides whether or not to bash us over the head. We can stack the odds; weigh pros and cons, make informed decisions, do everything in our power to ensure that the decisions we make our wise. Sometimes it works. Most of the time, probably, it works. But sometimes no matter how much we weigh and research and plan, the decisions we make turn and bite us in the ass.

Sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes, the things we do in the spur of the moment, the things that should very well end up with us dead, change our lives for the better. But that doesn't happen very much.

Sora ran into a burning house. He thought his mother was inside. His head was white. He did not remember that the easiest way to find out whether she was safe would be to make a call.

The explosion had been in the kitchen. Sora tumbled into it first.

There was debris everywhere, plates and cups and glasses shattered, silverware strewn over the floor, embedded in the ceiling, on the walls. The fire had made its way through almost the entirety of it, large flames growing larger as they ate up the walls. Sora skidded to a halt in the entranceway, eyes darting across the entire room, anywhere she could be buried under, any place she might hide. "Mom," he said. "Mother?"

Not there. He ran to the living room, the bathroom, the places that were just beginning to burn. Smoke was clogging the air, stinging his eyes and turning the world around him foggy and gray. He lifted his shirt over his nose and mouth, holding it with one hand. The other continued shoving open doors.

Closet. Laundry room. Pantry. All of them were empty. The fire was crawling over half of the bottom floor.

He shot up the stairs, tripping and stumbling over every other step; his legs were failing him; even his hand over his mouth couldn't filter out all of the smoke. The flames were licking at the floor beneath their feet, at the wood. How much time did they have, Sora wondered. Would the floor collapse? Did floors in burning buildings collapse? He didn't know, he couldn't remember; he'd spent so many hours listening to police officers and teachers talk about fire safety and what to do if something like this had ever happened, hours he'd spent paying attention, absorbing, and he couldn't remember a thing. Smoke rose; you weren't supposed to open doors if their doorknobs were hot; you were only supposed to breath with your nose. What happened to water pipes? What happened to floors?

He tripped onto the second story landing, landing hard on his knees.

His mother's room was on the right end of the hall, closed. He ran to it, throwing the door open and half-falling inside. Her bed hadn't been made. There were books scattered over the floor. He stumbled over them, pushing open the door to her closet, to the restroom. "Mom," he said. "Mom."

She wasn't there.

Cloud's room, sparse and spartan and devoid of anything that could have given it personality. Sora tumbled into it, cries growing a little more frantic now.

Demyx's, sheet music and amps and instruments bursting from every available space.

And then his.

The room he shared with Roxas had not caught on fire yet, though he could see the first thin trails of smoke billowing out from outside the window. They'd left it open earlier. There were clouds of gray beginning to stream in.

"Mom," he said, hoarse, stumbling toward their bathroom. "Mom."

The bathroom was empty. The fire hadn't reached it yet. His mother wasn't there.

She wasn't there.

Safe, then. She was safe.

He stumbled into the wall, grabbing onto it with one hand as the other clutched at his forehead and tried to grip away the dizziness that came with the sudden crushing relief. He pushed his nails into the skin, riding into the pain because otherwise he'd collapse and there were really very few worse places to collapse than in the middle of a burning building. His legs felt like jelly in a way they hadn't even in front of Riku. His mother wasn't here. His mother was safe.

He could go.

The door had rebounded off the wall when he'd burst into the bathroom, swinging itself closed behind him. He tripped the two steps it took him to collapse against it, and reached for the knob.

It burned.

He yanked his hand back with a shout, stumbling back so far he almost fell into the bathtub. His hand had gone red—not blistering, it hadn't been nearly hot enough to blister, but he'd grabbed barely-cooling skillets without oven mittens before, and that was the way it felt. Slowly, he looked at the door.

Tendrils of smoke were beginning to snake underneath the crack. The air felt much thicker than it had a few moments ago.

Sora shrugged off his jacket, wrapped it around his hand, and took a long step back.

 _All right,_ he thought.

 _It's okay. You can work through this. You can figure this out._

The house was on fire. He had not spent more than a minute stumbling through the upstairs rooms. The flames had consumed the nearest half of the downstairs when he'd run up, but he'd moved quickly, and he hadn't wasted much time. The longest he'd spent in a single position was just now, when the weight of relief had crashed over him so thoroughly he'd been for a moment unable to move, but surely that couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds. He wasn't that irresponsible.

The room outside was burning.

He could try to make it through anyway; his family would be upset if he died, and he wasn't much worried about injuries or pain. But he was on the opposite side of the house, and between him and any door was a great deal of debris. So that option was out. There were windows in the bedroom down the hall. He'd have an easier time making it there. But his lungs were already starting to burn, his head had begun to pound, and he hadn't been able to stop coughing for a few minutes now. He could wrap his shirt around his nose, maybe? He could—

More crashing outside. When he reached to touch the door knob again, this time it burned his hand through his clothes.

Think.

There was a window over the shower, too small to crawl through but existent. He shrugged off his shirt and pushed it under the water faucet, then wrapped it around his nose. He climbed onto the toilet for height and forced the window up. There was a screen; he tore at it until it gave way, then fumbled all the shampoo bottles and soap bars he could hold and tossed them through.

Smoke was beginning to pour in under the door. He grabbed towels from the rack and stoppered the crack as best as he could. Then he backed himself up towards the wall and slid to the floor.

Think. He could think. He was still alive, and that meant there was hope. He could figure something out. Someone would see the bottles on the ground outside and figure out that he was in the restroom. A path would open through the fire. He'd force himself through the flames outside to the room next door, and climb out the window. His mother hadn't been home. This had been for nothing, and if he died it would be because he'd been too much of an idiot to call his mom before making stupid assumptions and running inside his burning, half-destroyed home, but the important part was that his mother was all right, and his brothers were all right, and they loved him too much for Sora to just give up now. He just needed to last.

 _Think,_ he told himself. _Think._

The door slammed open.

Smoke was pouring in through the entrance, and his eyes had spent the last few minutes burning, and so it took him a few seconds to realize that the door had opened because someone had opened it. Then his vision adjusted, and the shadowed, dark figure standing before him became Riku.

Sora spent a long, horrified moment absolutely sure that the smoke had gotten him, that he was suffering from hallucinations, and that he would shortly thereafter die. But Riku didn't waver, and while Sora had a great deal of faith in his imagination, and even more faith in his ability to feel guilt, he didn't think that even he would be able to hallucinate someone so accurately, especially not if he were on the verge of a smoke-related death.

"Come on," Riku said, a hand over his nose and mouth. "Get up."

Sora was on his feet before Riku had finished, grabbing another towel and pushing it under the water quickly and then holding it up to Riku's face. Riku pressed it against his mouth and nose with one hand, and took Sora by the wrist with another. "Hurry up," Riku said. "Move."

The room outside was on fire, bed sheets and posters and papers curling at the corners as they turned to ash. They pushed through it, moving as quickly as they could without tripping over anything. Riku yanked him hard by the wrist. Sora half-shoved him through the bedroom door.

"The fire department," Sora said.

"Coming," Riku said. "Heard the sirens right before I came."

"My brothers."

"Outside. Saw you run in. Come on."

But they'd both skid to a halt in front of the stairs.

The fire had reached the steps, thick and dark. It had already begun crawling up.

They both stared at what had been their way out. Sora's hands were trembling. He shoved them both to his chest in an effort to make them stop.

Think.

"It's okay," he said. He took a step back, then tripped to the side, towards his mother's room. "Come on."

Riku followed him at once, his hand still hot and clammy around Sora's wrist. He didn't release it when Sora pushed inside, falling onto the bed and grabbing the sheets. There were only two of them there. He tossed them to Riku, finally pulling himself away. "Tie them."

Riku set to work immediately, knotting the sheets together twice, then a third time. "They're not going to be long enough."

"They'll be long enough we won't break our necks."

"No," Riku said. "You'll just break a leg."

"I'll probably break both legs," Sora said. "But I'd rather break a leg than burn to death."

Riku turned to him, the length of sheet fisted in his hands, shorter than they'd both been before he'd tied them. Even if they pushed the bed toward the window before they tied the sheets to the post, the blankets wouldn't give them more than perhaps six or seven additional feet. It would be fine. Six additional feet on a two-story house would be enough.

"Let me lower you down," Riku said.

Sora blinked. "What?"

"You're smaller than I am," Riku said. He coughed, lifting his moist towel to his mouth. "If I hold onto the rope instead of having to tie it to a bedpost, it'll give you a few extra feet. You'll have a better chance of landing unharmed."

Sora gaped at him. "No."

"Do you think I'd drop you?"

"No," Sora said. "But I'm not going to leave you here."

"Fuck you," Riku said. "You're not going to make it on your own. You're going to break your neck."

"I don't care," Sora said. "You came in after me. I'm not going to let you do that."

Riku opened his mouth. In the distance came a very loud crash.

They both stared.

"Come on," Sora said, heart suddenly pounding so loudly he could barely hear himself talk. He pulled thin, thin air into his already burning lungs. "The bed."

Riku grabbed it by one side while Sora grabbed it by the other, the two of them shoving it towards the window as quickly as they could. "Tie it," Sora said, once they'd gotten close enough that he thought he could push it the rest of the way on his own. "Come on."

"Fuck you," Riku said, fingers already fumbling the blankets. "I'm going as quickly as I can."

Another crash. This one sounded a little closer. Sora lodged the bed underneath the window, bedposts to the wall. "Come on."

"I'm going," Riku said, knotting the blanket around the post. It slipped through, came undone. He swore, tried again.

Crash.

Sora grabbed hold of the window and shoved it up, scrabbling at the screen until it came loose. "I'll push you through," he said, turning to look back at him. "We can jump. Come on."

"I got it," Riku said, voice almost a gasp. He took hold of the other end of the knotted bedsheets and tossed it out the window. "Go. go."

He took a step.

Riku's leg went through the floor.

There was an instant before they fell where Sora saw Riku's foot collapse the weakened wood, and he thought that perhaps if he moved fast enough he'd be able to catch him and pull him up. But then the floor gave way, and Sora tumbled down.

There were two houses on the screen, large and terrible and red, hollowed out by what a pretty blonde woman with a round face and large blue eyes was saying had been two unexplained explosions that had taken place within ten minutes of each other, the first a little under half an hour ago. Behind her, Cloud could see a bevy of police cars encircling the road, men and women in uniforms trying to keep the neighbors away. — _back up at the fire station_ , the woman on the screen said— _no idea what happened, but an incorrect phone tip earlier led the majority of the city's firetrucks half the town away._

— _at least three people inside._

Cloud stared at the screen.

In one frenetic burst of adrenaline-fueled terror, he jumped up.

And then Sephiroth's arms were around him, and his fingers were digging into Cloud's ribs, and he was pulling Cloud back but Cloud fought anyway, throwing himself forward so violently he felt Sephiroth's grip on him almost slip. It tightened again almost immediately, one hand coming up around Cloud's mouth to muffle his screams. He bit down on it. Sephiroth laughed, the sound like a surprised burst, and didn't let go.

"Is that all it takes?" Sephiroth asked, laughing and breathless and voice louder than it had ever been in Cloud's memory, as if he were enjoying this, as if Cloud raging and struggling in his arms was everything he'd ever dreamed. He wrestled Cloud to the ground, pulling his bloodied hand from Cloud's mouth and wrapping it around Cloud's wrists and slamming them to the carpeted floor. "You've spent a decade pushing people away. You've always known that you'd never be able to keep hold of the things you love. You should have expected something like this. Your world, your family, burned to the ground, and that's all we had to do to make you bloom. You're stronger than that, Cloud. Surely you know better than to be affected by something as trivial as this."

Cloud bucked up against him, teeth bared and heart so loud he could feel the vibrations in his throat. He didn't answer. Wouldn't waste the energy, when his head still felt disconnected from his body and it was only horror and rage that was keeping him conscious in the face of three people inside and he was half an hour away because he'd let this person so far within he hadn't realized that Sephiroth had always known exactly how to destroy him.

He reared up with his legs, wrapping them around Sephiroth's and then using the grip to lever him over. Sephiroth's face went blank with surprise for split second, grip on Cloud's wrists loosening just a fraction, and Cloud tore one of them away, scrabbling for the bedside table until he found what he was looking for, and then his fingers were around the glass of wine and shards were falling around them and the jagged edge of the broken glass was in Cloud's hand and the only thing that kept him from slamming it into Sephiroth's neck was the fact that Sephiroth's hand had once more found a grip on Cloud's arm.

Sephiroth grinned up at him, chest rising and falling almost as rapidly as Cloud's own. Drops of blood were sliding down Cloud's palm and pooling in the hollow of Sephiroth's throat. Sephiroth looked alive and conscious of him in a way he'd only ever looked in the middle of sex, and sometimes not even then. His eyes were green and very bright.

"I would have done this years ago," he said, in a voice like a promise. "If I'd known you could turn into this, I swear to you I would have done it when you were thirteen. Do you even see yourself? You're white."

The broken, jagged glass jerked an inch closer to Sephiroth's throat. Sephiroth laughed, the sound like a single puff of breath, and pushed it back and away, and leaned up and kissed him, and kissed him, and when Cloud bit at his mouth and tore at his tongue Sephiroth still kissed him, until Cloud reared back and slammed their heads together and Cloud's world went, just for an instant, black. When it returned, the broken bottle had dropped from his hand. Cloud grabbed for it. Sephiroth's grip tightened so furiously Cloud felt the bones in his forearm creak, and he forced both of Cloud's hands back to the ground, rolling them over again, until Sephiroth's body was draped over Cloud's and Sephiroth's knees were trapping Cloud's legs and the only motion Cloud was allowed was a blind twisting that sent Sephiroth's arousal brushing the inside of his thighs. Sephiroth barely looked as if he noticed. Why would he? Sex had always been secondary to making Cloud scream.

"We did this," Sephiroth said, the ragged, breathless edge to his voice still present, but purposefully softer now, the way people sounded when they wanted to soothe. "My partner, her partner—we did this. And they had their reasons, and I am sure those reasons were very good. But my reason was you. I want you to know that. Neither Maleficent nor the Leonhart boy would have ever realized their desire if it had not been for you."

Voices on the television screen. Cloud couldn't understand what they were saying.

"I'll kill you," he said. "I'll kill you, I'll kill you."

"You could," Sephiroth said. "If you were stronger. If you weren't so small."

"No," Cloud said again. There were tears on his face. Sephiroth was blurring atop him. Desperate agony was thumping the blood out of his torn palm. "I'll kill you. I swear I'll kill you."

"And maybe you will one day," Sephiroth said. "But right now you're weak, and drugged, and that day isn't now."

And that was the truth.

Three people inside. Cloud was half an hour away.

He choked, all the fury draining out of him as quickly as it had come, replaced by self-hatred so heavy he thought he would suffocate under the sudden weight of his chest. He curled in on himself as much as the pressure of Sephiroth's body would allow. His vision had gone wet and bleary. He closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see Sephiroth smiling down at him, turning away, choking on the gasps that were rising out of him like sobs.

Sephiroth made a soft, comforting noise deep in his throat, lowering himself further onto him and nudging their faces together like this had all been a bad dream. "It's all right," he said. "You're going to get over this. You're going to surpass it. You're going to forgive yourself, or hate yourself, and every day that passes is going to cement that feeling and make you strong. Cloud. You're going to be so strong. Of course you will be. I would never have made such an effort for you otherwise."

And then the pressure disappeared.

Sephiroth climbed to his feet quickly, the slow, casual cruelty of a few seconds ago replaced by an almost professional indifference. He cast his eyes around the room; apparently found everything the way it was supposed to be.

"I'll let you rest," he said, dusting himself off, eyes indifferent and cold. "There's wine on the counter if you'd like something for your nerves, and I can probably call for something stronger if you'd prefer. I'd wait a few hours, because I'm not sure how well it would interact with what's currently in your system, but the choice is, in the end, yours."

He stepped over the shards of broken, shattered glass still strewn across the carpeted floor. He stopped right before he walked into what looked like one of the suite's adjacent rooms.

"Turn off the television when you're done with it," he said, voice entirely devoid of the emotion that had filled it earlier. Now he looked like he hadn't cared about the last ten minute's proceedings at all. "I have work to do. And clean up your mess."

He disappeared inside the room.

Cloud lay curled on the floor where Sephiroth had left him, vision mostly blank.

There's a way that time seems to slow in stressful situations. It doesn't really, of course. Time is time. A second is going to last the same whether you're reading a book or watching your brother run inside a burning building to save someone who doesn't need to be saved. But it doesn't feel like a second.

The drawback is spending an eternity locked inside your own mind while the person you love best in the world either asphyxiates or burns alive.

The upsides is that you can get some thinking done.

The moment that Roxas saw Sora run in the house, he screamed.

This is what happened in the three seconds it took for the echoes to stop:

Roxas saw Riku, pushing through the bodies of a crowd that would not part for him.

Roxas saw Demyx, a hundred feet away, face bloody and eyes like stones.

And Roxas saw Sora.

People talk about lives flashing before their eyes, lifetimes seen in the space of a blink. Roxas didn't know whether that was true or not; he knew enough to know that the brain was powerful, that it probably could theoretically roll through years of memory in the space of an instant, but he also knew that people exaggerated, and that you could never really trust hearsay unless it was something you yourself had seen.

He didn't see his life flash before him; Roxas wasn't the one on the verge of death. But he saw Sora. Again and again, he saw Sora.

And for just an instant, he realized that Sora was never going to come back out.

Roxas watched, and thought _no._

He dropped himself from the tree, landing crouched the balls of his feet perfectly, the way he'd never before been able to imitate from Sora. He was moving before the distant aftershocks of pain finished shooting up his calves, sprinting towards the line of people a half block away. The crowd was thinner to the right, where the most debris had shot. He aimed there without properly thinking about it. His sneakers sounded very loud.

He'd almost reached the crowd when Axel caught him around the shoulders and forced him back.

"What," Axel said, "are you doing?"

Axel's eyes were wild, very green against the sick, sallow color of his skin. Roxas took a step back, yanking his arm out of Axel's grasp and hissing between his teeth when Axel's grip wouldn't loosen. As calmly as he could manage under the circumstances, he said, "Get off me."

"Screw you!" Axel said. "What are you doing?"

No give to Axel's grip; Roxas wrapped his other hand around Axel's wrist, digging in his nails. "I told you to get off me."

"I'm not getting off you," Axel shouted. "You're going to walk into a burning building! What do you think you're doing!?"

And Roxas would not let this happen, would not waste another second with this person when his brother was dying in a burning building one hundred feet away, close enough for Roxas to rescue. "I said," Roxas snarled, loud and very close to a scream, "get off m—"

Axel shoved Roxas back.

Roxas went windmilling, hands scrabbling at the air to try to keep steady. He tripped backward over a curb, the only thing keeping him from falling and splattering his brains all over the concrete the rearview car mirror he'd suddenly found underneath his palms. He righted himself almost immediately, heart pounding in his chest. "What," he said, when he found his voice, "the fuck _are you thinking_?"

Axel closed the distance between them, and caught Roxas's shoulders beneath his large, slim hands, and lifted him half onto his tip-toes, and kissed him.

For a fraction of a second, everything around him went still.

Then the world restarted, but its pace had suddenly gone uneven and slow.

The lips against his were dry and chapped. The chin against his was sharp. There were wild red locks of hair obscuring his vision, falling into his eyes, and no matter how hard Roxas looked he couldn't see anything beyond Axel's face. Something about it was wrong. It took a few minutes to realize that Axel's eyelids had closed. That seemed odd; he would have thought Axel would kiss with them open.

There was no tongue. It probably would have been simpler if there had been tongue. If Axel had kissed him deeply, Roxas's instincts would have marked it as an intrusion. He might have gotten angry. Axel wasn't kissing him deeply. Axel was kissing him as if he were drowning, and the only way to keep afloat was to refuse to let go of Roxas's lips. Or as if Roxas were drowning. Yes. That felt more correct.

He felt oddly removed from the situation around him, as if Axel's kiss had erased the way that color had been bleeding out of the edges of the world around him, and had turned it thankfully clean. There was a calm in his chest that he hadn't felt in ages.

Axel was kissing him. There was no sudden swell of outrage inside Roxas that made him want Axel to stop.

Axel backed away before Roxas could start examining why he didn't want to push Axel off. The expression curving apart his mouth still looked off. There was a level of desperation to it that Roxas wouldn't have associated with Axel. It looked human, and old. "I'm not," Axel said, "going to let you die."

That sounded an awful lot like a hyperbole. "I'm not going to die."

"Are you an idiot?" Axel said, the words hoarse, as if Axel wanted to shout but couldn't make the words emerge with the necessary force. "Wait, what am I saying. Of course you're an idiot. You've always been an idiot. You are the most spectacular idiot I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. Your house is on fire. I'm not going to let you go in. You will die."

"I'm not gonna die before I kill my brother," Roxas said. "You don't have to worry about me."

"I'm not worried, you absolute dick," Axel said. "I'm telling you that Sora's in there, and Riku's in there, and you're not going to go inside." He shook Roxas—not hard enough to hurt, not even hard enough to rattle his teeth, but enough that Roxas could feel the tremble in his arms as he did it. "Do you understand?"

"Yeah," Roxas said before he knew he was going to. He swallowed, head still stuck in that dreamy, faraway place it had been stuck in since the moment Axel's lips had descended on his. "That's fine."

Axel's face crumpled. He enjoyed a single moment of relief.

Then Roxas hit him around the face.

For a split second, Axel looked confused. Then that expression went slack, and he crumpled to the floor.

Roxas knelt before him slowly—more slowly than he could really afford when his house was on fire a few hundred feet away and his brother was inside. Axel lay prone on the ground, halfway between the grass and the pavement. His head had landed on the lawn, and his limbs were positioned as comfortably as they could be under the circumstances. He wasn't bleeding. Roxas wondered vaguely whether Axel would have a concussion.

Later, Roxas wouldn't really be able to remember how he felt at that moment. There was dim, distant guilt. There was dimmer, more distant bemusement. And there was something odd and horrifying and warm, snaking in the pit of his stomach like betrayal and love. But Roxas wouldn't be able to remember any of that. Truthfully, he wouldn't be able to remember much of anything, between the moment Axel had kissed him and the moment he ran inside. But he'd remember the way Axel's eyelids felt underneath his fingers. He'd remember the fact that, just for an instant, his primary instinct had been to touch.

Then that moment passed.

Roxas ran inside.

He didn't look back once.

Sora hit the ground. There was a very loud crack. The world went, for one horrible, nauseating second, pure white.

Then his head came back to life, agony shooting through his right leg, through his right shoulder and down his spine. He rolled onto his left side, the move forcing the air from his lungs like a punch, and shoved himself up onto hand and knees. His right arm was hanging limply by his side. His right knee had turned incorrectly. The shoulder was fine. It was only dislocated. He didn't want to think about the leg.

But that wasn't the problem. He was forgetting something.

Riku.

Riku was lying beside him. He wasn't moving.

Sora went still, every ounce of pain disappearing for the space of one second. Then he tipped himself onto his left side and slowly, painstakingly, crawled forward."Riku," he said, stuttering over the name with teeth that should not have been chattering when the world was so warm. "Get up. Get up."

Riku made a noise like a wounded animal, forcing himself into a sitting position. Sora reached for him. Then he stopped.

They'd landed in the living room, in the little alcove between couches, the place where their family had spent evening after evening sitting and talking. The room was on fire around them, flames licking the curtains and walls, but it was crawling slower, far enough away that they could move through it if either of them had been capable of moving.

Riku's legs were twisted the wrong way, and there was a wound in his side that Sora could not begin to comprehend. Blood was seeping out of him in measured, steady waves. Something looked like it had lodged itself inside him. Sora didn't understand that; there was hardly any debris around them. He didn't know from where it could have come.

"Riku?" he whispered. "Ri...Riku?"

Riku coughed, then made a noise like a dying animal and curled in over himself. Sora reached for the place Riku was clutching, then yanked them back. "Ri—" he said. "No, come on. Riku."

There were droplets of sweat pouring down the side of Riku's face. Sora didn't know whether it would be better if the sweat were from the heat or from the pain. He grabbed at the hem of Riku's shirt and tried to tug it off and away from the skin, but the sound Riku released then made Sora whimper in horrified guilt, and he took his hand back. "No," he said. "It's okay, it's not that bad. They can't be more than—" he paused, because his head was white and he couldn't remember what organs existed inside Riku's stomach that could possibly be damaged now. "You'll be fine. Keep breathing. Get up. Come on, get up."

Riku bared his teeth in what probably would have been a furious grin if agony hadn't been stretching his facial muscles wide. "Fuck you," he said. "I'm not getting up."

"Yes, you are," Sora said dimly. "Get up."

"I'm not getting up."

"I'll carry you if I have to," Sora said. "I'll do it with one hand."

"Sora," Riku said. "I'm not going to get up."

Everything around him went a little off-kilter. And for the first time since he stepped foot inside this burning house, Sora realized that he was going to die.

Sora had never wanted to die. This wasn't because he was particularly in love with life, although he was. It wasn't because he was particularly scared of death, although he wasn't. It had nothing to do with the quality of the life he led, it had nothing to do with anything resembling fear. It was only that he'd seen the way his mother looked on the day his father left. It was only that he'd felt Roxas's hand slip into his; that he'd looked at Demyx and realized for the first time exactly how thoroughly Demyx felt cold. Sora could have hated himself, could have hated everything about life, and he'd still love his family enough to never so much as think about death. His family loved him. He would not put them through the suffering they'd go through if he died.

He settled down onto the floor slowly, head oddly blank, cataloguing the room around him. Fire, moving towards them, only a handful of feet away. Dislocated shoulder, useless and throbbing. Riku.

"We shouldn't have tied the blankets to the bed," he said numbly. "If we had them we could have used them to haul you out."

Riku laughed, a harsh, ugly sound that cracked halfway through. "You have one arm and leg."

"I would have done it with none," Sora said. "I would have dragged you by the teeth."

"You're an idiot," Riku said. "I can't stand looking at you."

"That's all right," Sora said. "You won't have to do it for much longer."

There were perhaps ten inches between them; not enough room to move properly, not enough room to do much of anything. But Sora was close enough to see Riku's face. The fire had cast shadows all along it, turning the angles and curves of Riku's cheeks sharp and hollow. There was terror there. Sora wished he felt terror. All he could think of was that his mother's heart was going to break.

Slowly, every motion sending waves of agony (bearable) and grief (a good deal worse) through him, he crawled over the last remaining inches between them, and curled against Riku's side.

Riku didn't jerk. Sora was pretty sure he would have, if the life hadn't been seeping from his stomach and his legs weren't both shattered pieces of flint. But he didn't. His jaw was tight, and his hands were clenched by his sides. Riku didn't move. He did say, "get off."

"I'm tired," Sora said. "I can't."

"Fuck you," Riku said. "Get up. You have a leg. You can drag yourself out."

"Not really," Sora said.

"You're strong," Riku said. "You just told me that you could pull the both of us out of here if you had a blanket, you piece of shit. Get up."

"I could have pulled the both of us out of here," Sora agreed. "But I'm not strong enough to pull just me."

It took Riku the space of six breaths to fully comprehend the meaning of that.

He jerked himself back, dragging his broken legs with him with a shout that might have been pain and might have been outrage and might have just been sick despair. His face had gone white. His breaths were coming labored and fast, interspersed with the hacking coughs they'd both been suffering for the last few minutes. He looked horrified. For the first time since Sora had walked into his burning house, Sora thought he was beginning to feel horror, too.

"Fuck you," Riku said again. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you! You don't get to do this. You don't get to die with me."

"I would rather have lived with you," Sora said. "But I broke my leg."

"You can get out," Riku said. "Go along the wall. You can make it. You'll end up with third-degree burns, but you'll be alive."

"I'm an optimist," Sora said. "And even I can tell you you're wrong."

"Don't make jokes about it," Riku said. "Don't you fucking dare make jokes about it, you piece of shit. This was my fault. I caused this, I did it, your house is on fire because I couldn't take the fact that the person I was in love with would use my childhood against me and I couldn't take the fact that you thought that was what I deserved. This was my fault. This is what I deserve."

"My house is on fire because I pushed you," Sora said. "Because I pushed you and you were lost and someone took advantage of that. It wasn't what you deserved. This isn't something anyone would deserve."

"It's what I deserved," Riku said. "Don't try to pin this on anyone but me. I did this. My legs are broken. You're not allowed to die because of me."

"It's not because of you," Sora said, and here his voice cracked for the first time. "It's because of me."

"It's not," Riku said.

"It is," Sora said. "It's me."

Riku didn't answer. Sora could see his lips trembling, the beads of sweat curving down his cheeks. He looked like a child. Sora didn't know why he hadn't once in the entirety of their acquaintanceship realized that of course they'd all fucked up; they were seventeen.

He pulled himself forward with the side that still remained to him, until he was once more close enough to touch. Riku said nothing. Riku did nothing. Riku watched like he was wrecked, with eyes that looked as if they belonged to someone a decade younger, and when Sora leaned back against him, careful of Riku's injuries, Riku did not pull away.

"Fuck you," Riku whispered quietly against Sora's hair. "I hate you."

Sora nodded tightly, coughing, face pushed to Riku's shoulder. "I know. It never mattered."

"It should have."

"It couldn't," Sora said. "You're my friend."

"I didn't want murder on my list of sins," Riku said, soft and still. "Not wanting you dead doesn't mean that we're friends."

"You're my friend," Sora said, and his voice was a whisper now, choked and hoarse with tears and smoke and all the despair he'd tried so hard not to feel. "I know I'm not yours, I know I never had the right to want to be yours, but you're my friend. From the moment I met you I wanted to be your friend."

Riku's legs were twisted, shattered sticks. His right hand lay pressed to his bleeding abdomen. But his face was still pressed against the spikes of Sora's hair, and his left hand had found Sora's wrist. "You didn't," he said, low. "You spent a month sabotaging us. You spent a month driving us up the wall."

"So did you," Sora said. "And I cared. I cared so much it hurt. Every day we went home and Roxas would go to his room and he'd be so angry, and Demyx would go to his room and he'd be so stressed, and all I could think of was how much better everything could have been if we'd all been kind. But you wanted more than I knew how to give, and my brother hated you, and I couldn't choose you when I was so angry and Roxas needed me more than you." He sobbed, pressing his fist to his mouth to try to keep the smoke out, to try not to choke. "I wanted to be your friend. So—" The smoke was getting too thick. "So much. I wanted to walk home with you. I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to be able to call you up in the middle of the night because I hadn't seen you all day long and before I went to sleep I'd just want to talk."

Riku hand was tight around his wrist now, squeezing rhythmically, as if Sora were a stress ball, as if he needed to know that Sora hadn't left him and gone. Sora felt that. But his eyes were closed, and he didn't have to see.

"You mattered to me," he whispered. He coughed, and coughed, and tried to hold onto clarity when the world around him had very slowly begun to go dark and he felt so full of smoke. "We both messed up. We both—I messed up so badly. But none of us would have done any of this if there hadn't been so much emotion involved." He inhaled into his shirt, and twisted their fingers together. "Please don't doubt that you mattered. You were my friend. You mattered so much."

The fire was much closer now. Sora wasn't very worried about it. It would reach them soon; they'd both probably pass out sooner. His lungs were burning, and his whole body hurt. He felt tired, he felt nauseated, he felt sore. But the pain in his leg and arm had faded now, and Riku was right here.

 _Roxas,_ he thought. _Demyx. Mom._

Riku pushed closer, fingers threaded.

"Will you kiss me," he whispered.

Sora squeezed his eyes shut, tears on the lashes. He nodded.

"Not because we're going to die," Riku said. "Not—not because you feel sorry for me. I'm not—" He coughed, shook, held onto Sora's hand so tightly Sora thought he'd cry. "Don't let me pressure you, don't let me—we're not here. Imagine we're outside. You're not in danger. We're going to survive. I've just—I've forgiven you. You're not mad. We never did any of this. I never—we're fine. And I ask to kiss you. Do you say yes?"

"Yes," Sora whispered.

"Don't let it be because of this," Riku whispered. "This doesn't exist. No part of this exists except you and me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything I did. I'm sorry because I've never been able to make this easy for you. I'm sorry because we're in a burning building and all I want is to kiss you. I'm sorry. Everything you did was founded, and even if it wasn't I forgive you. I'm sorry."

The backs of his eyes were fire. "Yes."

"Tell me," Riku said, and there was something horrible in how his voice sounded as if after everything, after the phone call and the explosion and the realization that they would die, this is what had finally cracked him apart. "I won't—I won't do it unless you mean it. I won't kiss you if it's not what you want."

Sora pushed his face into Riku's neck. He felt hot. He felt cold.

"I like you," he whispered. "I'd let you. Please believe."

The hand in his shook.

Riku took hold of Sora's cheek, softly tipping it up. Sora opened his eyes. He closed them.

And Riku leaned down and, very gently, kissed him.

It didn't last long. Riku's lips were dry. There was blood in his mouth. Maybe he'd bitten his tongue. Maybe the wound in his abdomen had gone too deep. The fingers on his cheek were trembling, and Sora knew very well that the quakes were likely due less to nerves than to shock. But his heart hurt. Riku kissed him, shaking so hard their teeth knocked, and the feel of his mouth made Sora's heart ache and burn.

He drew back, hands on Riku's shoulders, Riku's fingers still on his cheek. He pressed their foreheads lightly together, eyes still closed.

"I wanted to be your friend," Riku said, and he sounded as if he were crying a little now, too. "I loved you. I love you. I wanted to be your friend."

Sora said, "I know. I know. I'm sorry I didn't believe."

And that was that.

It had always been as simple as that.

He settled against him, warm and uncomfortable and nauseated, while the smoke worked its way into his lungs and Riku began to go progressively more still. He was unhappy. His family would cry; he couldn't help but be sad. But this, at least, was good. He'd never be able to fix the pain he'd cause the people who loved him, but he'd been able to fix what he'd done to Riku, and that was good. There were fingers in his. There was the memory of warmth in his mouth. Riku loved him. He could die peacefully with that.

The world had gone darker now. He let it come.

He didn't notice the voice screaming at him.

He did notice the moment that the owner of that voice wrapped his fingers around Sora's shoulders and then dragged him out.

The first tug made him black out. He opened his eyes again three seconds later, the blissfully pain-free sensation of emptiness gone and replaced only with stabbing agony. His broken leg was banging against the floor, his dislocated arm was jostling against someone's arm. He coughed hard, doubling half-over, the edges of his vision going black, then white, but the person carrying him didn't stop moving.

Through the fire. Through the smoke.

And then light opened before him, and the person holding him threw him to the ground.

The fall jarred his shoulder, crashed painfully into his already shattered leg, but the pain felt distant again and it didn't hurt like it could have. He blacked out anyway, drifting in and out of consciousness. In: people in masks standing over him. Out: horrible pools of black that made him want to throw up. He tried to sit up, but there were hands on his chest and people keeping him down. He stared over their shoulder. For a few moments, he had no idea what was going on.

Then two people tumbled out of the burning, smoking door. One of them was Riku. The other was Roxas. Both of them were alive.

The remaining air flew out of his lungs. It meant that there was none left to exhale when Roxas fell atop him.

"You should have called," Roxas sobbed, face pushed into Sora's neck. "How could you? Why didn't you call?"

Sora only had one arm to work with, and his lungs were burning, and his leg was broken, and Roxas had not taken care not to aggravate the injuries, and now that a bit of the haze had fallen from his mind the pain had begun to return. It didn't matter. He lifted his uninjured arm to Roxas's shoulder, trembling with emotion or heartbreak or just shock, and held it as tightly as he could. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know."

"You're so stupid," Roxas said. "You're so stupid. I hate you. I'll kill you. Why didn't you call?"

"I don't know," Sora said, eyes beginning to go wet. "I'm sorry. I was stupid. I didn't think."

"You never think," Roxas said. "You've never known how to do a thing."

"I know," Sora said. "I don't. I'm sorry. I love you. Please forgive me."

Roxas sobbed, so hard he shook. "I hate you. How could you? Why didn't you call?"

Sora didn't have an answer for that, so he only held on tighter and let his brother wail.

They pulled him away a little while after that, people with uniforms and ambulances and stretchers. The world swam in and out of focus. People kept talking about taking him to the hospital. His leg was a mess, his insides were worse, and somehow without his knowledge he'd managed to cover his hands in burns. Roxas went with him. He thought he saw Demyx try to pull himself into the ambulance, too, but rules were rules and Roxas wouldn't let Sora go. Sora wanted to tell his older brother something. Maybe _I'm sorry_ , or _Tell her to forgive me_ , or the more relevant _Please don't stop loving me just because I almost left you_ , but the words had gone out of him and he didn't think his lungs/voice/mouth would work. Everything had gone watery. Everything was going a little fast.

Before the doors closed, though, he thought he saw Riku in the ambulance on the other side of the road. He thought maybe Riku looked at him, too. But then the doors shut before him, Roxas by his side, and the world drifted away.

Cloud would never know how long it took him to move.

He sat up an eternity later, fingers clutched around the edge of the bed. He thought vaguely about standing, but discovered he lacked the drive. Wouldn't do much good, anyway. The bones of his legs felt hollow, strange, as if they would collapse if he stood on them, or as if they weren't his. Yeah—that was more accurate. Maybe his body wasn't his. The thought made a small, faraway part of himself want to laugh. Upon an attempt, he discovered he lacked the drive for that as well.

Up, said a voice. It sounded like Zack's. He told it to shut up. With a breath like a sigh, it did.

Around him, the broken shards of glass lay scattered. There was a piece digging into his palm, in the place where he'd already almost sliced it in half. It was large; it looked like it had come from the rim. He picked it out, pulling it from the worryingly-deep gash and tossing it to rest with the others. Blood drained out of the wound in slow, measured pulses. Cloud watched it. Wondered without caring much either way whether it would stop.

He'd lost. That was all it really was. He'd tried to turn himself into a person who could stand on his own. He'd been wrong. There was no more point in fighting against that. The only thing that would happen if he tried was that he'd have to go home to whoever was left and tell them that he was the reason Sephiroth had decided to blow up their house, and that wasn't something he much wanted to do. What would it matter, anyway. He'd always known a doll was all he'd amount to.

 _Clean up your mess._

He pulled himself up with the fingers that had come to rest on the bed, levering himself onto his haunches, onto more shards of broken glass, onto his knees. He spread his hands across the carpet; he gathered the pieces in the bed of his palms. There was a trashcan in the kitchenette, industrial strength bags. He made his way there. Glass crunched beneath him. That was probably the only blessing of the last hour; he'd been so distressed upon arrival that he'd forgotten to take off his boots.

Shards in the bucket. Rinse off your hands. Again.

He bent over the carpet. He filled his hands up with wet, red glass. Again.

He ran his fingertips over the wool, tearing the skin over piece after tiny, jagged piece. His hands were a mess. It had become increasingly difficult to do anything with his head. But Sephiroth had given him another instruction, hadn't he. He'd said to turn off the television set.

He went to do that.

He saw one last piece of glass.

He took hold of it. He stood up.

On the screen, two boys staggered out of the burning, falling house.

Later, when people asked him, when he refused to answer but dug inside the ruins of his memory anyway, Cloud would have very little recollection of what had occurred in this room. Truth be told, he only barely remembered the worse of what had happened when he'd been a child, either, but he at least had the misfortune of imagination and long years with regard to that. He would never be able to remember most of what Sephiroth had told him, or what he'd done. He would remember weight, he would remember breath. Mostly he'd remember misery, suffocating and so deep he'd desperately wished for death. But the rest of it would be mercifully lost in the carefully constructed cage his subconscious had created years ago to hide the memory of almost everything Sephiroth had done.

But he would remember this:

Cloud stood in the middle of a perfect, empty room, blood dripping from his hands onto the perfect, empty carpet, and in front of him was a television set, and in the television set was a burning house, and two boys were pulled from the mess of it by another and in the distance, invisible but shouting, was Leon.

 _Three,_ the voice on the television had said.

One. Two. Three.

Cloud stood there, still, one last piece of jagged, bleeding glass clutched in his hand, for an indeterminate amount of time. He had no idea how long. His head had not spent a second of the interim working. He hadn't been thinking anything. He hadn't been feeling much at all. By the time he came back to himself, the image on the screen was of the last remnants of the fire beginning to finally be put out.

He watched it. He pressed the hand holding the glass shard to his chest.

He walked to the other room.

Sephiroth looked up at him.

"Hey," Cloud said.

He hurled the glass shard directly at Sephiroth's head.

Sephiroth jerked out of the way.

In the instant it took him to do that, Cloud was across the room, and he tackled Sephiroth to the floor.

Ten (twenty, sixty) minutes ago, when Cloud had first tried to do this, he'd failed quite badly. Sephiroth was larger than Cloud; he was stronger; he'd always had the advantage of knowing exactly how to ruin everything in Cloud's head. Cloud had been distraught; Cloud had been drugged; Cloud was still drugged, still felt as if he were out of himself, or as if his body didn't belong to him. But there was a strange cold, terrible elation stabbing at his insides, and his head felt cool and his heart felt as if it would scream, and that meant that there existed no future and no universe in which this could have any end other than this.

Sephiroth fell, and twisted, palm coming out to slam against Cloud's neck, and Cloud turned with it, grabbed the arm and pulled it forward, pulled Sephiroth forward, slammed his skull against the bridge of Sephiroth's nose; grabbed Sephiroth by the sides of his face when he jerked back and rammed their heads together again. The move sent nausea and dizziness shooting like electricity down to his stomach, but all the nausea in the world could have overridden the sick joy either, and he forced Sephiroth down, shoved his knee deep into his gut and grabbed the glass and pressed it to Sephiroth's throat.

For the space of a single long, stammered breath, Cloud thought about all of the things (the ones that were obvious, the ones that were not obvious, and the ones that he'd spent (spend) years whispering to himself like a mantra in the depths of his head: _you're pointless now; it doesn't matter anymore; and this is all it took_ ) he could have said. He debated the emotional catharsis that would possibly, if Sephiroth shut up long enough to let Cloud get the words out, come. And then he snorted.

"Yeah," he said. "No."

And, so quickly he barely had time to enjoy the split-second of motion where Sephiroth's face went from indifferent disdain to absolute shock, he hit him hard on the face.

"That's for ten years of insomnia, asshole," he said to Sephiroth's bloodied face, and stepped over him and out the door.

And then he was free, and the elevator/lobby/world opened up before him, and he walked out. He took a step forward. And then he began to run.

He didn't know where he was. He thought he could vaguely recognize the shapes of certain landmarks, the names of certain streets, but the floor beneath him was gently spinning, time was stretching and contracting in short, never-ending pulses, and the drug in his system hadn't disappeared yet, was still working its way through his body, leaving him flushed and breathless, and he could barely recognize a thing. He ran anyway, sprinting past buildings and people and cars, signs flashing past him as he took one road, then another, working on instinct more than knowledge because right now the depths of his knowledge consisted of how badly he needed to get to where he was going and desperation never aligned well with direction. It didn't matter. He knew where he was, and he knew where he was going, and it didn't matter that he had no money and no phone. He just had to run, and run, and:

Ambulances.

He pushed through the crowd of people surrounding them, the paramedics, the nurses, the people who looked at him with confused eyes and asked him who he was and whether he needed help. He stopped when he reached the ambulances and saw that they were empty. He spun on his heel, beginning to shove his way back out.

In the distance, he saw two very familiar cars.

They parked closer than they legally should have been able to. Two different groups of people tumbled, ashen-faced and tight-lipped, out.

He knew them. Every single one.

Time skipped.

And when he once more gained possession of his mind, he was in the middle of them, and Rinoa's arms and Tifa's hands and Leon's mouth were all around.


	23. Epilogue: Exit the Players

**Disclaimer:** and lo, the author said unto the internet, kh is still not mine. **Author's Notes:** please stay tuned for the end notes!

* * *

 **Epilogue: Exit the Players**

Sora woke up to white.

He blinked blearily at his surroundings, brain still a bit too foggy to make sense of the unfamiliar bed, the flowers, the television mounted on the wall. There were bouquets of roses lining every available surfaces, nestled between larger bouquets of chocolate and video games and books. The T.V. was on, but muted, playing a movie about cauldrons. And laying on the side of his bed was a brown head of hair.

"Mom," he said.

His mother woke immediately. Her arms were around him a second later. He lifted his own to reciprocate before he remembered that he'd dislocated one of them the day (the day? he didn't know how long he'd been out) before, bit his lip so she wouldn't have to hear him groan, and settled the other loosely around her back.

"My baby," she whispered into his hair. "My stupid baby boy."

He closed his eyes, curling the arm around her a bit tighter. There was an IV pumping fluids and painkillers into him, things that turned the borders of his vision a little hazy, and that took the edge off everything he felt, physical and otherwise. It made the guilt softer than it would have been; made it a lot easier to feel only warmth and slow, gentle joy. He pushed his face into her shoulder, the way he'd done as a child and shouldn't have stopped doing now. "I'm sorry," he said. "I was scared for you. I didn't know you'd gone."

"I know," she said. "You were always the most ridiculous one of us all."

There was no way he could deny that, so he didn't try.

She held him for a very long time, warm and perfect and alive, while he breathed her in and tried not to think the deeply selfish thought that all of this had been worth it if only in that it had helped him to remember exactly how important spending time together like this was. "It's going to be all right," he said. "I know it might not seem like that right now. I know you don't have a reason to believe me right now. All I've done is cause problems for you, for all of you, I've been so stupid, I've been such a fool. But I'm going to work hard. I promise everything is going to be fine."

His mother drew back. Her eyes were red and the kind of swollen that came when you'd spent a very long time crying, but they were also warm and they were also dry. "Darling," she said, and her voice cracked a little bit, but it was strong. She'd always been the strongest person he knew. "I know."

He wanted to cry. But that wouldn't be fair to her right now.

Especially not as a crash had just sounded from the door.

Roxas stood there, the bag of hospital food he'd been carrying splattered all over the floor. His eyes were painfully wide.

The next few hours passed in something like a blur. There were shouts. There were nurses coming in and ordering Roxas not to shout. There were thermometers and stethoscopes and doctors coming to tell him about how badly he'd fucked his body over, and how it would probably be a few weeks before his lungs had healed enough for him to go back to a normal life. And then Demyx came in, wild-haired and wild-eyed, and the shouting started all over again. By the time he fell back asleep two or three hours later, his body was aching, and he wasn't sure he'd have been able to walk even if one of his legs hadn't been unworkable.

He woke again in the middle of the night to the same tableau. The television was still on and muted, the room was still overflowing with roses, and his mother was still resting quietly against the bed. But this time Demyx and Roxas were both there, curled up in couches on the other side of the room and whispering quietly to each other.

Sora spent a few moments watching them unannounced. He didn't know why they were there; wasn't sure any of them were meant to be there. In the movies, hospitals always had rules about visiting hours, and the three of them were sitting a little too openly to have snuck in. Maybe the rules were different for family. Maybe it was only that they loved him, and would happily bully anyone into letting them stay. He didn't care enough to question it. He was alive.

Roxas noticed him first, as he almost always did. He stood up at once, the chair clattering a little too loudly behind him. Demyx grabbed him by the arm and motioned to their sleeping mother. Roxas subsided, walking quietly over to the side of the bed. Demyx didn't leave his chair.

"Sorry," Roxas said. "Did we wake you?"

Sora shook his head. "Figured I'd slept long enough."

"You won't be saying that an hour from now," Roxas said. "Doctors said you'd probably be in and out for the next week."

"I'll get to that when it comes," Sora said. He reached for the remote control, inclining his bed up. He let himself sink down, closing his eyes in an effort to conserve whatever energy he still possessed. Then, softly, he said, "Tell me what I missed."

There were soft noises beside him; Roxas shrugged. "We're all getting arrested."

Sora's eyes shot open. "What."

"Joking," Roxas said. "Zexion found a way to blame it entirely on Maleficent. Don't ask me how he managed it, given that I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have blown up two buildings if she thought there was even the remotest chance of her getting caught, but apparently he did. Congratulations! We're not spending the rest of our lives in a juvenile facility."

"Technically," Sora said, "given that we'd be turning eighteen soon, we would only have spent the next year or two of our lives in a juvenile facility—" Roxas raised his eyebrows. "—but I take your point. Maleficent?"

"Was apparently out of the country before Riku even opened his fat mouth," Roxas said. "Who knows."

"Oh," Sora said. He closed his eyes again, shifting as much as his body would let him to try and hide his face. "How's Cloud?"

"He's been here," Demyx said. "Had to check in himself. He seriously fucked up his hands. Won't really tell us how. But he showed up for a while after they patched him up. He stayed the first twelve hours. Mom sent him home when he collapsed."

"That's not what I asked," Sora said. "I meant how is _Cloud_?"

Demyx shrugged. "Cloud's Cloud. He's not going to freak out over a house."

Sora ducked his head into his chest. "Just because he's calm for us doesn't mean he's not upset."

"Of course he's upset," Roxas said. "His home got exploded. We shouldn't even be living with him. None of this would have happened if we hadn't moved in. But he also apparently has a hundred other things to be worrying about, so right now on the list of things you need to freak out about, the last one is gonna be Cloud."

Sora didn't agree with that. But both of his brothers looked like they didn't want to talk about that right now.

"What's going to happen to the house?" he whispered.

Demyx waved a hand through the air in a half-hearted approximation of a shrug. "Don't know. Since everyone's relatively sure it wasn't actually our fault, the insurance claim is pretty definitely gonna go through, but we don't know what's going to happen in the meanwhile. Aerith's agreed to put us up while we get our feet back under us, but I don't think there's gonna be enough room. We'll probably have to split up for a while. Until we get a place rented, or until they start to rebuild."

"I'll buy everything for you," Sora said. "All of your games and books. I'll get them for you."

"Stupid," Roxas said. "You'll never have enough."

"I have stuff saved," Sora said. "From—jobs. I...It's not a lot, but it's enough to cover at least some of it. The furniture, our—our stuff. I'll help. With everything I can."

Roxas didn't touch him often. It wasn't because Roxas was cold. It wasn't because Roxas didn't love them just as much as they loved him. It was just that some people had difficulty with emotions sometimes. Some people couldn't (or wouldn't) make their mouths and bodies express what they felt in their heart.

Roxas reached for him with his always-a-little-too-chilly hands and pressed them both lightly to Sora's cheeks. Behind him, Demyx was quiet, his expression distant and a little old.

"It wasn't your fault," Roxas said. "I want you to know that. You could call it Maleficent's. You could call it Riku's. You could call it mine. None of us did anything but make an already bad situation worse. But I want you to believe it wasn't your fault."

"I'm never going to believe that," Sora said. "No more than any of us will."

"It's the truth."

"When you're talking about blame, there's never really gonna be an easy truth," Sora said. "We all have to live with what we did. But all that guilt is never gonna be more important than how we try to fix it."

Quiet, while Roxas drew back a few inches. "Do you want me to forgive them?"

"Yes."

Roxas bit his mouth. "I won't."

"You asked me what I wanted," Sora said. "Not what I expected you to do."

"That's not a real answer," Roxas said, quiet. "If I told someone about him, no one would be able to say I was wrong. What we did was—cruel. But he tried to frame you for an explosion. They almost took you away from your family. The things he did resulted in the destruction of our house. If the next time the police stopped by to ask us about it, and I told them that it wasn't only Maleficent, no one in the world would be able to say I was wrong."

"No one," Sora agreed. "But Maleficent took advantage of all of us. All of her friends took advantage of all of us. We pushed each other and pushed each other and pushed each other, and we're always going to be at fault for that. I don't want—I don't want to ever stop believing that if only I'd been kinder, we could have prevented this all. But they drove us to a corner." He took a breath, feeling so much more tired than he had ten minutes ago. "It's not an easy answer. I told you. It's never going to be an easy truth. But I did terrible things because I was hurt, too. None of us were blameless, and if we start getting into arguments about who hurt who worse we're never going to be happy and this is never going to end. I want Riku to forgive me. There's no point in me working toward that if I'm not gonna forgive him, too."

In a whisper: "He burned down our house."

"I know," Sora said. "But it wasn't just ours. Please let that tell you something about how desperate he was."

Roxas's hands had gone back to his lap. There was an expression on his face that Sora couldn't remember ever having seen before—not sad, exactly, not lost, but the way you looked when a long time ago something had been taken away from you, and you'd only just now come to terms with the fact that it would never be returned.

"I'm not going to care," Roxas said, quiet. "I'm—I don't think there's anything wrong with not being able to forgive someone for doing horrible things. I'll do my best not to be bitter. I'll try really hard to respect your wishes. And I know that I—I know that all of us did really bad things, too. None of us were blameless, and if I'd accepted that earlier...I don't know. But I don't think I'm wrong if I can't forgive him. You don't always have to forgive people. Please don't hate me because I'm not as good a person as you."

"If I were a good person, I don't think I would have gone this far," Sora said. "But I'd never hate you. You don't have to forgive him if you can't, or don't want to. It's all right. You're not doing anything wrong."

Maybe, if they hadn't just gone through the day they'd been through, Roxas would have responded with something differently there. Maybe, if Sora hadn't been lying in a hospital bed with an aching arm and a broken leg and burns on multiple parts of his body, Roxas would have argued. Maybe (more than maybe) Roxas would have had the right. But when Roxas spoke his voice was quiet, and that was answer enough.

"He asked for you," he said.

Sora nodded, covering his face with his uninjured arm.

"I don't know what happened in there," Roxas said. "I don't know. I'm not going to ask that you tell me. All right? Not about any of it. Not at Maleficent's. Not in our house. I'm not going to push you. I'm never going to—to make you tell me what he said. Just tell me that he's not going to screw you up, yeah? Just tell me that whatever the two of you want, you're going to be okay."

There were plenty of responses Sora could give to that. All of them would be, as close as he could make them, truths.

"We're friends," Sora said instead. "Whatever happens in the future, we're going to be friends. And that means that no matter what, I'm gonna have him and my family and you, and so I'm always going to be okay."

A few feet away, their mother breathed evenly, and Demyx watched without saying a word. Roxas pressed his face against his knee for a moment. Hushed, a little forlorn: "He _did_ do worse than we did, you know."

Sora laughed. "I'm not gonna respond."

And that was that. It would always be that.

Roxas exhaled, a long, shuddering breath. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

He stood, stretching his arms over his head and then rolling them back. "I'm gonna take a walk," he said. "Do you want me to pick up something for you at the fast food place on the ground floor?"

Sora thought about pressing; Roxas didn't often take walks unless he had a reason, or he wanted to be entirely alone. Either option could mean Sora had hurt him. But they were growing up, and they all needed secrets.

"Whatever you want," Sora said. "Go."

Roxas paused at his bedside. And then, quickly, he bent and gave his brother a quick, tentative hug.

"Get some sleep," he said. "Be happy."

"Yeah," Sora said. "I know."

Roxas left. The room once more fell still.

Demyx hadn't moved during the exchange. He'd watched everything; Sora had been painfully aware that he'd been listening. But he had only opened his mouth at the beginning, and had never seemed to flinch.

"I don't know what to do," Sora said.

Demyx sighed, the sound slow and coming after a pause, as if Demyx had needed to remind himself that questions required answers. "Yeah," he said. "You and me both."

Roxas hadn't lied when he said he'd wanted to take a walk. He hadn't even lied when he'd said that he was going to head down to the ground court later and grab something to eat. But he had another destination as well.

The ward Sora had been placed in was emptier than most hospitals, the way Radiant Garden General was always emptier than most hospitals—people often didn't get hurt here the way they did in other towns and cities; the city rarely saw the same kind of violent crime. It meant that most patients didn't have to share. It also meant that Roxas ran into no one on his way to Riku's room.

The lights were off, save a dim one from the en-suite bathroom. Tifa was asleep in the room's other bed, and Leon was sprawled in one of the chairs. Zexion had left hours ago; Roxas knew, because Demyx had been silent and distant for hours, and had only unravelled (if just slightly) when they'd seen Zexion quietly walk by their door.

Riku was out cold. There were IVs coming out of him in three or four different places; half of his body was a bandaged wound.

Sora had not emerged from their house unscathed. Roxas hadn't been entirely sure that Sora would emerge at all. But Riku had come closer to death. Roxas probably hadn't helped that by dragging Sora out first; both of Riku's legs had been broken, and even at a glance Roxas had been able to see his life bleeding out of his gut. But Sora was his brother; Riku was just the boy who lived next door.

He'd destroyed their home.

He'd gone in to rescue Sora.

One day, maybe Roxas would find a way to reconcile those two things.

"Last place I'd expect you to be," Axel said.

Roxas hadn't heard him coming, and he hadn't really thought Axel would also somehow be flouting the visitation rules. But he'd come here for a reason, and that reason hadn't been to visit someone whose only good decision in the last month had been to fall in love with his brother.

Axel was holding a bag of food in one hand, and what looked like a book box set in another. He looked about as unsurprised as Roxas felt. There was curiosity in that, Roxas thought: in the fact that Axel could look at him as if Roxas's presence was something he'd come to expect. Maybe that should have been a surprise. But the only thing he felt was the same curious lull that had come over him the last time they'd met. His chest had again turned quiet and staticky; he couldn't bring himself to feel anything resembling offense.

"I risked a lot to get him out," Roxas said. "I wanted to make sure he wasn't dead."

Axel shifted, looked away, shrugged. "You would have heard," he said. "Tifa probably would have come by."

"She wouldn't have."

"You're not the one she'd be coming to tell," Axel said.

Roxas turned. "I didn't mean it entirely as a joke."

"I know," Axel said. "It was still a pretty shitty thing to say."

"Yeah," Roxas said. "I'm sorry. I know."

Axel didn't reply. But Roxas knew him well enough not to have expected him to, and that took some of the discomfort away.

"How's he holding up?" Roxas asked.

If the question surprised Axel, he didn't show it. "About as well as can be expected, I guess," he said. He shrugged again, leaning back against the wall. "Lots of scrapes, lots of burns. His lungs were pretty fucked up."

"They were in there a while," Roxas said. "Sora's—his are, too."

"Is he all right?"

"For a relatively unorthodox value of all right," Roxas said. "But he's better."

"It's been a few days."

"And it's going to be a few days more," Roxas said. "It's going to be forever. But they'll be all right. We're all gonna be all right."

Axel tipped his head back against the wall and didn't respond. Roxas slid down against the wall on the opposite side of him, far away enough that if someone had been walking by they might have assumed they didn't know each other, definitely wouldn't assume they were friends. He didn't do it out of malice. He wasn't really sure why he slid down at all. Sitting felt vulnerable. Sitting made it more difficult to get up and away. But neither of those truths were anywhere near the forefront of his thoughts; all he really knew was that it was easier to talk to people when you sat.

"How did you do it?" he asked.

Axel knocked his skull back lightly against the wall, sliding down to join Roxas on the floor. "Should I pretend I don't know what you're talking about?"

"You could," Roxas said. "I'm not going to push."

"You always push."

"Not about this," Roxas said.

Axel turned to him. Not for the first time, Roxas wondered when it had become so difficult to read the emotion in Axel's eyes.

"I called in favors," Axel said. "My family's made up of deviants and criminals. All of them could have given me whole dossiers about the shit any one of Maleficent and company had gotten into over the years. All of them had proof. But none of that would have been worth a thing if your brother hadn't finished them off."

"How?" Roxas whispered.

"He was angry," Axel said. "You can ask him yourself if you want to know exactly what he did. Knowing him, he'll probably even tell you. But in the end, that's all it was. My family gave me enough noose to hang them with. Sora knew enough people to make sure that no one, corrupt or otherwise, would be able to stop us. But none of it would have mattered if they hadn't pushed him. Your brother was angry. That was all."

Roxas watched him quietly.

"I'm sorry," he said. "For everything. I'm really sorry."

Axel shrugged. "You knocked me out."

"I'm sorry," Roxas said again.

"You're not," Axel said. "You'd do it again. If this building caught on fire right now and I tried to pull you away, you'd leave me in the middle of it and somehow manage to cart your entire family out. Maybe you're sorry for the rest of it, but you're not sorry for that."

Nose to his knees. "I wouldn't leave you. I'd take you with me."

Roxas's eyes were closed, and his face was pressed into the space between his legs, so he didn't see the expression Axel's face contorted into then, but he did hear his slow, shaky breath.

"You ran into a burning building," Axel said. "To save two people who could have very well been dead, in a house that was collapsing around your ears, and you did it while expecting me to watch and you did it while knowing that when I woke up I was going to want to die."

"He's my brother," Roxas said. "I love him. I'm sorry I hit you. I don't want you to be upset. But you're right: I'd do it again. I'm not sorry for that."

For a few minutes, the only sounds Roxas heard were Axel's quiet, forced-even breaths. He thought about leaving. Thought about asking exactly when the shift between hurt and forgiveness had occurred. But if he opened his mouth he thought Axel would probably tell him to leave, and that was something he'd like to put off for at least a little longer.

Breathe. Axel breathed.

"Would it be okay if I kissed you again," Axel said.

Roxas exhaled. "I don't know."

"Not really a clear answer."

"It's the truth, though," Roxas said. "I was mad at you for an awful long time. I'm not mad anymore. But not being mad doesn't mean I know what to do."

"You don't have to do anything, if you don't want," Axel said. "Even if you did decide to let me. It's all right to be confused sometimes, even while you're in the middle of things. It's fine. You don't always have to know exactly what to do."

"I know," Roxas said. "But I've made too many decisions these last few weeks without really thinking them through. I don't want this to be one of them. But you can sit with me. You can do that if you want to."

He thought he felt Axel turn to look at him. But then there were footsteps, and a thump, and a warmth by his side, and Roxas curled further into his knees.

Axel hadn't pressed tightly against him. There were a few inches between them, and their only point of contact was the place where Roxas's elbow brushed Axel's ribs. But Roxas could feel heat seeping into him, and he could sense Axel close enough to almost touch. He shook his head once, burrowing it deeply against his legs. "I don't know what to do," he said.

Axel sighed. "Good," he said. "I would feel pretty bad if I were the only one who didn't have a clue."

"Sorry," Roxas said. "Sorry for all of it. I know I didn't make things easy for you."

"Making things easy wasn't your job," Axel said. "You took care of your brothers. Anything aside from that would have just been icing on the cake. Didn't exactly make my job of trying to seduce you away from them any simpler, but we weren't really playing fair, either. Don't apologize. We were all doing everything wrong."

"Doesn't mean I shouldn't apologize."

"Do you want me to apologize?"

"I don't know," Roxas said. "Maybe later. Not right now."

"Then when you tell me you'd like an apology, I'll ask for one, too."

"Yeah," Roxas said, in a sigh. "Okay." Then he took a breath, and lifted his head up a fraction, though it remained mostly resting on his legs. "All right," he said. "Now I think it would be okay if you kissed me."

And when Axel curled a palm around Roxas's neck and bent to do just that, it didn't feel wrong at all.

The next few days passed in a flurry of visits and hospitals and activity. Sora spent most of it alternating between wanting to sleep and insisting that he would ceremonially sacrifice the next person who insisted he sleep, and he missed most of it. His mother came by every day. Demyx came by every other day. Roxas would have come by every day, except "coming by" implied that he ever actually left, and (to the increasing consternation of the ward's entire staff, but especially the ones who worked at night) that was a pretty false implication.

And when they weren't there, Kairi was there, and when Kairi wasn't there, Donald and Goofy were there, and when Donald and Goofy weren't there Sora was busy trying to keep Roxas from tackling the sizable pool of reporters who'd sequestered themselves in the room next door (given that Sora currently had only one uninjured arm and leg apiece, he didn't do very well).

Cloud had stopped by once. Sora had taken one look at him and burst into tears. By the time he finally stopped crying, Cloud had taken a seat by his bed and fallen asleep there. Sora had drifted off a few minutes later, exhausted and so full of guilt he thought he'd choke with it, and when he'd woken up Cloud had gone. He thought he could remember Cloud brushing his hair before he'd left, though. If he tried hard enough, he thought he remembered Cloud saying, _I love you, I don't blame you, it wasn't your fault_. Possibly, that had been a dream though. Sora couldn't remember Cloud ever having told his family that he loved them.

Then, once his injuries were no longer severe enough to justify draining hospital resources more than they already had, he went home, where he...again proceeded to spend the next few days alternating between wanting to sleep and insisting that he would ceremonially sacrifice the next person who insisted he sleep. Broken bones took a long while to set; he could make his way around with crutches and casts almost as well as he did without them (better, actually—he could launch himself all the way across the room with crutches; he could only manage it half as far on his own two feet), but he'd almost died in their house. His body was still trying to remember what it had been to be healthy.

So he went home, which wasn't _home_ (Aerith had always been very kind) but at least had all the most important features of a home, like his family and his friends and a wooden sword that Demyx and Roxas had carved from the broken remnants of their house and which had sent Sora into loud, pealing wails the instant he saw it. The point was: he was out of the hospital. He was home.

He woke up in the middle of the night, in the liminal period between day thirty and day thirty-one of not-home, with a vague ringing in his ears. For a few minutes, he stayed there, warring between the impulses to get up and go back to sleep. The longer he waited, however, the further away his dreams drifted, and he finally sat up with a quiet sigh. He rolled out of bed, grabbing onto the crutch he kept against the side of the bed with the arm that wasn't in a sling, and trying to get used to the dark.

On the other side of the room, Roxas groaned, turning onto his side, still half-asleep. "Sora?"

"Shh," Sora whispered. "It's not even four yet. Go back to sleep."

"No," Roxas said, turning over and burying his face in the pillow. "Should get up."

"Shh," Sora said again. "Sleep."

Roxas didn't answer. Sora bent as well as he could, brushing his fingertips over the spikes of his brother's always messy hair, chest welling with the same nameless emotion that still came every time he remembered that the both of them were alive. He pulled up a breath afterward, walking as quietly as he could out the door.

Aerith and Zack lived in a three-bedroom that was really too large for the both of them, or would have been if you hadn't spent the last month watching them in fascinated horror as they made Excel spreadsheets of baby names. Rinoa had taken one of the two upstairs bedrooms. Demyx had claimed the living room couch. They'd given Sora and Roxas the bedroom downstairs; it would have been difficult for Sora to make it up the steps with his crutch, and Roxas would not be left alone.

He made his way to the kitchen slowly, leaning against the wall as much as he could because otherwise he'd place too much weight on the crutch and it was too early to be banging around the house. He passed Demyx, snoring on the living room couch, a cell phone in one hand and what looked like a half carved piccolo in the other; thought about trying to take either away, but Demyx had been upset lately, and Sora didn't think he'd like waking up without either object securely in hand.

The kitchen was mostly dim, the only light coming from the green glow of the microwave clock and a small night light pinned beside the sink. Sora walked toward the latter, where he stood for a long moment, head dipped almost into the basin and fingers curling over the rim. He turned the water on blindly, letting it splash over his hair, his head, run into the blur of his eyes and the laxness of his mouth. It drove the remnants of his sleep away, but didn't do much for his head.

The pit of his stomach had felt awkward these last few weeks.

He left his crutch resting against the counter, opening up the refrigerator and grabbing both biscuits and cheese. He set them in Aerith's toaster oven, but got impatient before they finished and drew them back out. The inside of the bread was still mostly cold. The cheese burned his mouth.

He spent the next few minutes trying to smother his restlessness the way he'd spent the last month trying to smother his restlessness, with distractions and memories and filling up the inside of his head with family and friends until he had no room to think of anything else. But he'd left the safety of his adopted room, where he could have woken up Roxas, and Demyx wasn't the sort of person who would have been able to help at the best of times, let alone now.

He cleaned the crumbs, grabbed his crutch, and very quietly walked out the front door.

The streets outside were empty, the owners of its houses on their computers, or in their beds. It wasn't a cold night. It would still be a few months before they began having cold nights, summer only just beginning to decide that it would one day like to end. But there was a soft, cool breeze blowing, cold enough to make him wish he'd thought to take a sweater although not cold enough to pull him back inside. The lamplights cast a warm, yellow glow. They gave him more than enough brightness to see.

Aerith's house had never been far away—part of the reason it had been a little ridiculous for Cloud to have taken Zack's move so badly. It took him ten minutes to make the trek to what had once been (and would shortly, once construction had finished, again become) his home.

It looked different.

The moment he had the thought he dismissed it as a silly one, because of course it looked different; it had been largely destroyed, then completely destroyed, then built again from the ground up. There were tall beams of wood rising from the foundation, skeletal planks divided into what would one day soon be rooms. It was farther along than the Leonhart house, but only just. They would both probably be rebuilt within a few days of each other.

The tree that had once loomed proud in their backyard was gone. It would take longer to grow that.

Sora sat down on a pile of dirt and rock, and bowed his head.

Behind him, something loud cracked.

Riku stood there, wearing an expression that looked as if it were a little too tired for shock.

"Hey," Riku said.

Sora nodded. "Hey."

Riku looked very different from the last time Sora had seen him. Given that the last time Sora had seen him Riku had been suffering from smoke inhalation, had broken both legs, and was bleeding out on the floor, that probably wasn't extremely surprising, but even then. The last time Sora had seen him, the look on Riku's face had made Sora's insides want to curl. It still made him uncomfortable. But the discomfort didn't feel as it had felt all those weeks ago. It felt more like being a little too full.

Riku was walking on a pair of crutches similar to Sora's single one, but one of his legs was already out of its cast. His hair had been cut shorter, closer to his chin, and his head was held very straight now, disorienting when the Riku in Sora's memory had always held his at a sardonic tilt. He looked much older than he had seemed two months ago. Sora supposed near death experiences could do that to you. So could realizing exactly how far pain could make you go.

He raised his uninjured arm to the one in the sling, massaging almost unconsciously at the place where his arm met his wrist. "You look good," he said.

Riku seemed for a second as if he wouldn't answer, or as if he didn't want to waste the energy it would take to come up with one. He shrugged at last, nodding. "Legs are doing better. They were pretty clean breaks."

"Yeah?"

"Comparatively," Riku said. "Given that Axel said the fall totally shattered yours."

Sora shrugged, ducking his head to his chest. "It wasn't that bad. My leg'll be better soon."

"Define soon."

"Five, six more weeks," Sora said. "And then if everything looks all right, they'll think about taking it off."

"Don't know if that really counts as _soon_."

"They thought at first it would take something more like months," Sora said. "It could have been worse."

"Yeah," Riku said, after a pause. "You're right."

And then Riku fell silent, and Sora didn't think he would again speak.

The world outside wasn't darker than it had been fifteen, twenty minutes ago, when Sora had first decided to take a walk. The street lamps still shone as brightly; the moon still cast exactly the same amount of light. Nothing about his exterior had really changed. But—

But.

There were words, perhaps, to describe the way he felt, ones that matched only partway, or that didn't cover everything. His hands felt heavy; his head did not. His chest felt like it were caving under pressure; his heart did not. The darkness around him pressed in on him, alternating warm and cold, but there was no threat to it, no warning. He just felt as if he were waiting for something, and the waiting hurt, but he also knew well that there would be life on the other side of it, if he could only last. Discomfort, maybe. Something a little bit like the potential for light.

Weight.

"They said they'd probably have both houses finished in another four or five months," Sora said, swallowing past the sudden dryness in his throat, the sensation of blackness settling to wait for its counterpart in his bones. "I mean, they also said they weren't gonna complete construction until our families signed agreements that any and all future instances of total property destruction as a result of the Strife-Leonhart War would in no way be attributed to shoddy construction work on their part, but the point is. Five months."

Riku shrugged his hands against his crutches and jerked a shoulder up. "Faster than I thought it would be."

"Cloud pays a lot for insurance," Sora said. "Also the head construction guy is Demyx's ex-boyfriend, and I think Dem might have strong-armed him into finishing up quickly by way of incriminating photographs of genitalia. Or with blow jobs. It's hard to tell with Demyx."

"He's my brother's boyfriend."

"I know," Sora said. "Sorry. He didn't really."

"It would be easier to believe that if I'd ever known exactly what was going on between them."

Sora thought of Demyx, increasingly withdrawn and making bitter phone calls to ex-girlfriends and boyfriends that lasted five minutes before he invariably grew irritated or furious and hung up. "The only thing that could possibly go on when you deal with people like our—like my brother," he said. "I'm sorry. He was happy. He wouldn't do something like that. That's the only thing I know."

Riku nodded, and shrugged again. His eyes were locked on the buildings. Sora didn't know whether that was because he was embarrassed, or if Riku just didn't really want to see. Both possibilities made something unpleasant curl in the pit of Sora's stomach. He pushed it down and said, quietly, "Tell me how you've been."

Riku wiped a hand over his mouth. "Probably a little worse than you."

"Sorry," Sora said. "You don't have to answer."

"No," Riku said. "Sorry. I've been fine. I mean. Still having trouble with my legs, but they're getting better. I can walk, yeah? It could have been a lot worse."

Sora nodded, sliding a hand around his belly. "They didn't tell me very much about you."

"Don't think your brother would want to."

"It wasn't Roxas," Sora said. "He's been—He told me you wanted to see me. He probably told me more about you than the rest of them combined. I don't know how he—I know he didn't really visit you."

"I wasn't the one he was visiting," Riku said.

Sora nodded, looking down. "He's been...happier. I think. I mean, none of us have really been happy, but he's not...upset. He's probably been doing better than all of us."

"Figures," Riku said. "That the guy who was angriest about all of this is the one who got a happy ending first."

"He told me about you," Sora said, as a reminder, or just because he thought he should. "Don't be...upset with him. If you can help it. He's been trying really...really hard. He's been just about the only one."

Riku turned up to the sky. He didn't immediately reply. Sora held on tightly to his crutch, closing his eyes a second. For comfort, maybe. Respite. A few seconds where he could pretend that none of this had ever happened, that he and Riku were home. The wind outside had stilled. He could hear every sound the pebbles made beneath Riku's feet.

"My legs hurt," Riku said. "Eyes hurts. Hand's pretty okay, and my stomach stopped bothering me a few days ago. Axel spends a lot of time over, but we don't talk much. Mostly he just plays Dynasty Souls 3 and tries to talk me into giving him a puppy. A few police guys came over last week, because they don't really believe whatever bullshit Zexion spun them about me being totally ignorant of the fact that Maleficent and company were gonna blow things up. I tried to confess, but he hit me in the gut and then the moment they left proceeded to spend three whole hours lecturing me on how me getting arrested would break Mom's heart, and how I'd already done enough of that in this lifetime. Yesterday was the first day any of them let me out of the house. I kind of think they should have kept me holed up there longer. I did the summer reading for the next two years. I missed you."

Shivers were running up and down Sora's body. He curled his uninjured arm around himself.

"Your brother's right," Sora said, quiet. "I don't want you to get in trouble. It wasn't your fault."

Riku turned, far enough that no matter how hard Sora tried he would no longer be able to see his face.

"Axel said something like that," Riku said. "That you had a hard time understanding things like where to place blame."

"I understand it," Sora said. "I just think that if you kick someone enough that they finally lose their temper and hit you back, it's not right to say it's their fault."

"You can't absolve a person of responsibility."

"You can try to understand where they came from, and realize that things would have worked out differently if someone hadn't driven them to the edge."

"Weird," Riku said. "That I'd agree with your brother on this more than I'd agree with you."

"Maybe," Sora said. "But even if I hadn't forgiven everything you did, I would still blame that woman a thousand times over before I even thought to blame you."

Riku's hands were tight around his crutches. There were almost imperceptible quivers running along the line of his arms.

"I might not come back," he said.

Sora's head jerked up.

"It's not because of you," Riku continued, voice so low Sora had moved closer to hear (or to grab onto him) before he'd quite realized it. "I think my parents started talking about the possibility a little after the thing at the restaurant. I liked the city. I think after they realized how badly we were all fucking up they started wondering whether or not it would be better if I left. Just for a while. Until everything calmed down." He rubbed a hand over his nose. "It's not set in stone. They said they'd leave it up to me. But I think I might. I have an honorary aunt in Hollow Bastion. She'd take care of me."

Sora pressed his hands into his stomach. "Don't."

"It's not up to you," Riku said. "It's not—it doesn't have anything to do with you."

"It's my fault."

"It's not," Riku said. "It doesn't—" He paused, swallowed, and Sora would have given anything in the world to have been able to see his face. "It doesn't have anything to do with you. And I don't mean that to take away anything from you, I don't mean it like an insult. I don't. But even if we were—even if I was important to you. Even if we were together. Even then, it would still be my choice. That's what I mean. It wouldn't matter even if you did love me. It would still be my decision to make." A shift, a breath. "I'm not running. But sometimes people need time to try to remember how to be the person they used to be, and sometimes people just need to get away. Don't make me feel bad for that."

Sora closed his eyes and shook his head. "I won't," he promised, quiet. "Whatever your decision is. You should always do what's best for you."

"Not always," Riku said. "But my family loves me in spite of it all. That means that right now I think I might be able to afford to."

Sora curled around his crutch a little more tightly, face pillowed against the armrest. "What would you do?"

Riku shrugged. "Go back to school. Classes are starting in a few weeks, yeah? Mom had already enrolled me here, but since it's been summer I never actually attended school in Radiant Garden. I wouldn't have any new teachers to meet, would still have the same friends. Won't see Axel as much anymore, but everything else would probably be easier. I only had a year left in the first place; it was always gonna be an inconvenience, switching districts this close to college apps."

"Recommendations, you mean?"

"Among other things," Riku said. "Clubs. Different curriculum." He exhaled; the sound whispered towards Sora like a breeze. "Zexion never minded. Or if he did, he kept it to himself. He was already driving across the city for university; I don't think he really cared about having to drive a half hour more. But I never wanted to come."

The metal of the crutch was, against his cheek, quite cold. "I'm sorry we made it so hard for you."

"Don't be," Riku said. "For a long time it was the only real fun I had."

"Didn't mean we made it easy."

"I hated the thought of moving here," Riku said. "I never expected it would be easy. I just wanted to make it through."

And how could Sora respond to something as terrible as that.

He pushed his face hard against the cool relief of the arm rest, steel clutched to himself because some part of himself still believed that holding on tight to comfort items really could make everything okay. He exhaled shakily. He curled his fingers tight. "I wanted them to tell me about you," he said. "Every day I was at the hospital, and every day since I went home. I asked them. I wanted to know all about you."

Riku stood still a moment. And then he pushed away from the wall, grabbed his own crutch, and stood. He made his way towards Sora. Slowly, slowly—so slowly Sora could have stepped back, or run away, or started his own swim team—he took Sora's cheeks in his hands, and brought their foreheads together, very gently, to rest.

"I know," Riku said. "I didn't want you to."

And then he turned, and made his way back to the car. Sora watched him go.

And just for an instant, Sora saw what would happen if he let him go. Not " _if Sora let him go back to Hollow Bastion;_ " Riku was right when he'd said that ultimately that would have to be his own choice. But if Sora let him go right now. If he stood there, quiet, while Riku walked back to his car and drove away.

Riku would move. Riku would come back occasionally. For the first few months, things would be strained. They would talk every once in a while; they would say stupid things about what was going on in their lives. They would try. But eventually the weight of all that happened between them would grow heavy, and the desperation keeping them together would fade, and the visits would get less frequent. They'd say hi occasionally. They might stop doing even that.

Sora would never have to worry about ever hurting someone so deeply again.

Sora watched Riku go.

The crutch topped to the ground.

"Remember," Sora said, "when you asked me to kiss you?"

Riku stopped.

Sora was on his feet. He couldn't remember having done that. His arm slung a little too stiffly by his side. His leg felt as if, in a few seconds, it would stop being able to support its own weight.

"You told me to act as if everything was fine," he said anyway. "You told me to pretend like we were okay, and we were outside, and we weren't gonna die."

Riku didn't answer. Sora could read no emotion in the bowed way he held up his neck.

"I couldn't do it," Sora said. "I'm sorry. I have a lot of imagination, I think, but I didn't have enough for that. We were dying of smoke inhalation, we were sitting in a building that was gonna collapse around us, and I couldn't forget that. I didn't at all stop thinking that we were gonna die. I couldn't. You asked me to kiss you, and I knew 100% that we were going to die. But we're not in danger now. The only chance of death I possibly have right now is my leg giving out on me and busting my head open on the floor."

Riku's back was stone. Sora's heart was fluttering in his chest like a bird.

"Riku," he said, and his voice was loud, and echoed across every neighboring walls. "Will you kiss me?"

Riku had crossed the distance between them and bundled Sora in his arms before Sora even finished saying the words.

And when Riku finally pulled back, eyes wide and mouth babbling things in a way he hadn't since things were at the worst, Sora pushed his face into Riku's neck and said, "I heard you. I'm sorry for not answering right away. I'm sorry. I missed you, too."

There were legal ramifications. Some aspects of the insurance investigation were still pending. Some aspects of the criminal investigation were definitely still pending. No one doubted that any member of the council had been involved, and no one doubted that Maleficent had been at the forefront. But a few people still doubted that the explosions hadn't been precipitated by a member of either the Strife or Leonhart families. Let's be real: they had a point. But no one had any proof. The only ones who knew were the members of both families, and they weren't talking.

There were emotional ramifications. There were psychological ramifications. There were for fucksure monetary ramifications. It was disingenuous to believe that even something like a prank war wouldn't have consequences. Everything had consequences. You don't go through something like a month-long war with the kids next door without coming out of it a little different, maybe a little less whole. Just because things began nicely doesn't mean that they end that way. If things had ended a week before they did, maybe all of them would have emerged a tad less injured, physically and otherwise. Sora and Roxas had used the circumstances of a boy's childhood against him. Riku had, manipulated or otherwise, been party to the destruction of two houses. Those were the sort of things that made you lose a little faith in yourself. It always took a while to build that back up.

But:

"If you wanted to call me out," Zexion said, "there would have been better places."

Demyx shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to hide how much he was shivering. "Shut up."

"I'm sorry, I misspoke," Zexion continued, "I said _better places_ , but I also should have added _better times_."

Demyx moved a little closer to the street lamp and doggedly ignored his watch glowing AM 3:19. "Shut up."

"Really," Zexion said, "this entire venture is ill-advised."

"I said," Demyx shouted, "shut up!"

And then they were kissing.

Cloud and Tifa sat on the couch, a foot of space separating them.

"I'm sorry for taking him away from you," Cloud said. "I wouldn't have done it if you'd loved him even a bit."

Tifa smiled wistfully, shrugged. "I know you wouldn't have. You would have pined until the day you died."

"I wouldn't have."

"Not the way you'd define it," Tifa said. "But I know you. You live in your head. And sometimes that's all right, but not when you're sad."

Cloud bowed his head. When he thought he was finally brave enough to ask: "Are you going to leave?"

Tifa laughed. "No. I'm going to build a commune, where we'll all live in one semi-incestuous, polyamorous train wreck."

"What."

A grin, a snort. "That was at least halfway a joke," she said. Then she tipped herself over across the twelve inches separating them, and let her head rest on his chest. "My ex-husband is here. My best friend is here. My sons are here. I am not going to leave."

Cloud nodded, and closed his eyes. "Good."

"Also," Tifa continued, as if she hadn't even stopped, "have you seen the neighbor? She's hot."

Cloud whipped his head up to stare at her. "You're not going to marry my aunt."

"I'm going to marry whoever I damn well please," Tifa drawled. "It worked well the first time."

"You got divorced the first time."

"Yes," she said, "but I ended up with a family. I figure it all works out."

Cloud watched her quietly, the fall of her long, dark hair. Quietly: "You're going to be the death of me."

"Probably," Tifa said. "But the same goes for you, and I don't mind."

Later, after they'd sat there for so long the sun had begun to set, and the gaps between their fingers had been filled, and the places where their bodies rested against each other began to feel like they always should have, like they could have been born as one, Tifa sighed. "I'm glad I didn't love him like you do," she whispered. "It would have killed me to hurt you."

And Cloud nodded, and held her hand tighter, and said, "Thank you. I know."

"You're a piece of shit," Demyx said. "Arrogant, asshole piece of shit—"

"Because that's apparently the only insult you know," Zexion said. "I've no idea why you've ever cast aspersions on my intellect, when the only insult you can think to call me is piece of—"

"Sorry!" Demyx cried. "I'm not a freakish genius! I don't have a vocabulary full of ten-syllable words to dish out every time I think I'm going to lose an argument, you stupid, infantile—"

"Oh, that's a decent one," Zexion said. "Infantile. One would almost think you had a brain."

"Fuck you! I don't have to take this from you!"

"Of course not," Zexion said. "Why would you bother to put any effort into this when you've been cavalier from the start. "

"Shut up," Demyx shouted. "I've spent the last month following you around like a lapdog, what makes you think I'm going to stand—"

Three girls sitting on a bed, their hands loosely clasped.

"We're never going to be like that, are we?"

There were multiple things she could have meant. _We're never going to get so angry_ , maybe. _We're never going to sink so low._ But whatever the intention had been, the answer would always be the same.

Kairi clutched the hands held in hers, and said, "no."

"You can't ask me to choose between you and my brothers," Demyx said. "You can't do that, no one is allowed to do that, there is no one in the world who could ask me to choose that, and I can't...I can't make an exception for you."

Zexion shifted, eyes fixed vaguely on some point in the distance. "I'm not," he said. "I didn't intend to. It never had anything to do with them. But Riku was my brother, too."

"He was wrong."

"He was," Zexion agreed. "And I knew it even then. But your brothers could be mass murderers and you would still follow them to the grave. Don't act surprised that I would support someone I knew to be wrong when you would do ten times worse."

Demyx let his head rest a little more heavily on Zexion's shoulder. He kept his eyelids fixed closed. "I hated it," he said, whispering, like it was supposed to be a secret and not something that had been obvious from minute one. "All of it. From the beginning. Being angry with you. Having a reason to be angry with you. False allegations of infidelity. The whole tired Romeo and Juliet shtick. I hated it. I hated every single thing."

And the largest indication that Zexion was all right now was that he didn't answer sarcastically. He only said, "Yes. Me, too."

"You think you got everything under control?"

"I think so," Sora said. "The hard part was setting it up. Now I guess it's just a matter of trying to live with the results."

Auron shrugged. He was still in his omni-present bathrobe, but his face looked simultaneously older and more relaxed since the last time he'd played an important if relatively minor role in the story. "That's about all we ever do," he said. "But if it makes you feel better, you all really did do a public service. City's better off without the Council. I know you'll probably eat yourself up with guilt regardless, but you did good."

Sora thought about saying, _yeah_. Also thought about just saying (or at least trying to say), _I know_. But both responses felt awkward in his throat, and neither seemed like they would make him feel very good.

"I never said thanks," Sora said instead, rubbing a wrist against his stomach and trying to figure out what to say even as he spoke. "I was still...really mad. But that's no excuse, and after all you did for us I hate that I didn't say thank you."

"Not exactly gonna deny your right to be upset," Auron said with a shrug. "If anyone had a reason to be angry with me, it was you."

"You didn't do it on purpose. It wasn't your fault."

"Word on the street is you've got a problem with assigning fault to anyone but yourself, kid," Auron said, and sighed. "I was the one who brought the idea to Luxord in the first place. If it hadn't been for me, none of them would have gotten their hands on you. Way I figure, this was just me trying to dial back a bit of the damage I caused."

"Sure," Sora said. "But that doesn't mean anyone else would have done it."

"People love you," Auron said. "You could have told anyone that you were going to try to take the ruling elite down, and all of them would have done everything they could to help. The only way I'm different was that I had the connections to do a good enough job, and I was being motivated half by anger and half by guilt. Also because Luxord has blackmail on everyone in the city and I have blackmail on Luxord, but mostly because of the connections and anger and guilt."

"Whatever the reasons," Sora said, "thank you."

Auron reached out to ruffle his hair, and, just for a moment, smiled.

"Yeah, kid," Auron said. "No problem."

Cloud and Leon bowed over two separate books. Their hands were a joined link between them. Faint smiles spread across both their faces. They didn't talk at all.

"Think the only reason our parents haven't killed us is because the two of 'em almost died," Axel said.

Roxas snorted, pushing his nose against the blade-sharp jut of Axel's knees. "I'd rather they have killed us."

"Everyone would have rather they killed us," Axel said. He curled the fingers of one hand tight in Roxas's hair; danced the fingers of the other over the knobs of Roxas's spine, and whispered prayer-fervent words of thanks to whoever was listening that they'd allowed this boy to live. "You know that I—"

"I know."

"I didn't want that to happen," Axel said. "I would have talked him out of it if I'd known."

"I know," Roxas said again, whispered into Axel's thighs. "You don't have to justify yourself to me."

Axel smiled, sharp or sad or both. Like a secret: "I've always had to justify myself to you."

"Not about this," Roxas said. "Not anymore. Don't let me do it again. It wasn't your fault."

Axel bowed his head a bit. Roxas's skin flushed hot in the morning light.

"You'll drive yourself to the grave like that," Axel said. "Obsessing over all the things we did, and all the things none of us are never gonna be able to change. But I'm not gonna let you. I'm gonna do my best to make sure that never happens. So distract yourself. I want you to tell me a story."

Roxas fell quiet. It took him a few moments before he was able, haltingly, to speak.

"I don't know a lot of stories," he said. "I'm not my brothers. But I could tell you about things in real life?"

"Yeah," Axel said. "That's fine."

Roxas buried himself in the space between Axel's legs, curling into him like a compass towards north. He thought.

"A girl just moved in the next street over," Roxas said at last. "I think her name's Xion."

"I should have gone," Demyx said, low, because Roxas was asleep in the bedroom down the hall and he couldn't let anyone but Sora see him now. "Roxas went in. He didn't abandon you. He didn't leave you to die."

"He should have," Sora said. "If I'd been dead, if he'd failed, if he'd gotten trapped inside the way that we almost were. We would have died. What would have happened then?"

"You didn't. He was strong."

"So are you," Sora said. "You did the right thing. Mom would have needed you. Cloud would have needed you. You're a good brother. You didn't do anything wrong."

Riku hoisted his last box into the trunk of the car. Sora, sitting on the hood, threw a popsicle at him. Riku caught it one-handed, then hopped up beside him.

"Done?" Sora asked.

"Done," Riku said. "I think that's the last of it. Got all the essentials. Anything else, I'll get it shipped."

"Calm down," Sora said. "You're moving forty-five minutes away."

"I could try to stay away, you know," Riku drawled around his popsicle. He slurped noisily and then waved the dripping mess at Sora's face. "Radiant Garden has been very bad for me. I'll probably just avoid it like the plague."

Sora stuck his popsicle down Riku's shirt. Then Riku reciprocated, and Sora re-reciprocated, and by the time they both collapsed against the hood of the car they were sticky and uncomfortable and laughing so hard they would probably, in a few seconds, start to cry. Sora curled up against him. He nudged his nose into the crook of Riku's now paopu-flavored neck. "I meant it," he said. "Before. Everything I said."

Riku nodded, rubbing an arm across his face. "I know. I trust you."

"You definitely shouldn't," Sora said. "If the last few weeks have taught me anything it's that I shouldn't be trusted with anything until the end of time."

"I'd trust you with the end of the world," Riku said. "I'd trust you with my heart."

"No," Sora groaned, laughing because it was cheesy but also a little bit on the verge of tears. "The last thing I should be trusted with is that."

"There's not much you can do about it," Riku said. "You've got it oozing in your palms."

"That's so gross."

"All over them," Riku said, grabbing one to nip at the knuckles of Sora's thumbs. "Dripping weird bodily fluids and total adoration into your weird knobby hands."

"Gross," Sora said again. "You're so, so gross."

Riku leaned forward over the hood of the car, and Sora met him halfway.

And then later, the sun high in the sky: "We're gonna get through this," Sora said, against the pulse of Riku's neck, and his fingers were warm against Riku's wrist, and his heart was a fluttery thing in his chest. "Everything."

"I think so," Riku said. "But that's not a guarantee."

"Nothing's a guarantee," Sora said. "But your problem was that you said _think_. You can think anything. But _think_ 's never gonna be more important than _believe_."

Riku curled around him in a mirror of the way Sora's own body had curved. "You've always dreamed bigger than me."

"It's not that," Sora said. "It's just that I want a lot of things, and I'll never be able to have them unless I see."

And then, in the quiet hours of the morning, hands held between them: "I really didn't blow my ex. That was total slander."

Zexion laughed, and, before he could talk himself out of it, squeezed Demyx's hand. "Oh," he said. "Yes, that was the only rumor I didn't actually believe."

"So," Roxas said. "What you're saying is we get all of it."

Luxord shrugged, face a careful mask in the way of someone who had made it their life to keep their face a careful mask, and who wasn't about to let something like blackmail and threats and the loss of an unconscionable amount of money stop him now. The fact that his left eye was twitching slightly was almost beside the point. "The two of them were pretty insistent."

On the other side of the small, dark room that the participants of the Strife-Leonhart war (+one Luxord) were all currently clustered into, Axel smiled, as wide as a scythe. "Well," he drawled, "given the role that you played in the, uh...proceedings, I think it's only fair."

"I played no role," Luxord said. "All I did was give people an outlet to gamble as their blackened hearts desired. That practically makes me an impartial observ—"

" _Given the role that you played in the proceedings_ ," Sora said, "I think it's only fair."

Luxord squinted at the expression on Sora's face, decided discretion was the better part of valor, and gave. "Yes. Fair."

"I'm glad that we're agreed," Axel said, with a deep, content sigh. "So. How much was in the pot?"

Luxord told them.

"Yeah," Axel said, after a long, drawn-out pause, wherein every person in the room went a little pale. "I probably would have committed gross felonies, too."

"That's a decade's salary," Sora whispered. "That's _a million_ decade's salary."

A pause. All of them thought very hard.

"We get 60%," Roxas said.

Riku jerked, turning towards him with a snarl. "Fuck you? You're the assholes who started all of this," he said. "You should be happy with 40."

"You blew up our house," Roxas said. "You should be happy you get anything at all."

"Like you're the only ones who suffered extreme property damage."

"I don't think it counts when you're the ones who caused it?"

"I was distraught. I think I had the right."

"You know who else commits felonies and thinks they have the right? Serial killers."

"Our mothers are going to be very happy," Sora said.

The boys fell silent. One by one, they pictured Tifa's and Rinoa's faces.

Both sides got 50%.

"Hey," Zack said. "Flower girl."

Aerith curved her body into his like a parenthesis. "Mm."

"Flower girl," Zack said again. "I like you."

Aerith's smile was like a hundred thousand skies.

"Oh," she said. "I like you, too."

There were ramifications. But.

Leon and Cloud spent almost as much time together now as not, and whatever the case—whether they were watching movies, or sparring, or even just going about their lives, alone and confident and pleased—they were good. Axel and Roxas spent the majority of their time making out in increasingly inappropriate locations. Their relationship mostly involved Axel following him around while Roxas bought him ice cream and allowed it. But they smiled a lot. They looked a little happier than they'd been before.

No one knew exactly what was going on with Sora and Riku. If someone asked them whether they were dating, they always said no. But they held hands sometimes. They went everywhere together. You could catch them spending long minutes just looking at each other's face. Kairi spent a lot of time shaking her head at them. Selphie mostly just smiled.

Demyx and Zexion were on a road trip. Sora and Roxas spent the first week cracking jokes about marriages in Vegas. Then the first post card from Nevada had come, and they'd both (with varying degrees of gleeful horror) stopped making jokes. Now they mostly just alternated between trying to pretend that Zexion and Demyx had obviously gotten lost and trying to reassure themselves that Zexion was too practical for that.

(Zexion _was_ too practical for that. But Demyx had suffered through shotgun marriage jokes from the moment he'd become sexually active, and fake marriage notices stolen from the D*sn*yland Wedding Chapel were how he exacted revenge.)

Zack and Aerith had a June wedding. Tifa and Rinoa were enjoying a whirlwind romance. Mickey and Minnie were voted "the best couple in the history of anything, ever, why would you even vote for someone else" for the tenth year in a row. The world was beautiful. Things were good.

But those were only the obvious bits, the parts that everyone saw. There were more. Riku graduated at the top of his class. Sora and Roxas built a tree house. Demyx accidentally ended up opening for Ars Arcanum in a freak accident that involved bagpipes, kool-aid, and crime, and Zexion engineered an academic coup that left him #1 in his class and left a lot of other people very angry, and Riku and Roxas disappeared during one of Riku's visits for ten minutes, and when they came back they were both a little stiff and a little white but when Riku left Roxas said goodbye to him and Riku said goodbye too, and Rinoa quit every part time job she had except the one she actually liked, and Cloud made it through a day (and then another, and another) without feeling ill at all, and all of those things were victories, too.

Life was more than just the sum of its parts, was so much more than a never-ending progression of meetings and gatherings and events. It was friendship, it was family, it was love. It was arguing over pizza toppings at two a.m., and celebrating triumphs at four. Sometimes it was just days, minutes stacking upon minutes with nothing accomplished and nothing done. Sometimes it was _days_ , but the minutes lasted hours and guilt and anxiety felt as if they would leave you smothered and gone, and it would be disingenuous to ignore how large a part of life that was as well. Life was a thousand things. Life was more.

One day, things would probably go wrong. Perhaps someone would break up. Perhaps all of them would break up. Perhaps Maleficent and Sephiroth and the rest of them would pay off the police and would then be allowed to go free, and the entire cycle would begin again, only a bit more desperate and violent than before. All of those were possibilities. The future was a wide, disquieting place.

But they were brave. They were strong. And that day, if it ever came, would be faced.

Life wasn't perfect. But sometimes, it could get pretty close.

And the best of it began the day the Leonharts came.

 _Regardless of warnings The future doesn't scare me at all._

And one more:

A woman sits in a dark, secluded corner of what appears to be a dark, secluded cave. (In actuality it's more like a large mansion with a room decked out to look like a cave, but Maleficent had always been fond of theatrics, and if she wanted to spend a few years laying low in a cave, then she would use her substantial fortune (amassed from the misery of many) to lay low in a cave.) It's early enough that Maleficent could probably still be drowsing in her large, evil-chic bed, but she woke up in the middle of the night with a strange unsettled sensation in her gut, and hadn't been able to make it go away. An impartial observer would have described the sensation as _foreboding_. Maleficent only has very-partial henchmen, however, and so keeps no one around who would be able to identify the feeling and then calm her down.

She sits in a large, leather armchair, sipping tea and playing idly with a raven that perches atop her fingers. A knock sounds on the door. A few moments later, a man creeps in, holding a thick, brown envelope and wearing an expression of profound fear. "Sorry, ma'am," he says, bowing profusely. "This came in the mail."

Maleficent raises an eyebrow and extends a hand for a letter opener. The man gives it. She slides the blade across the edge and withdraws what looks like a burned DVD.

The sensation in her stomach grows worse. She resolves to take an antacid with brunch.

She pops it in. The player spins uselessly for a moment, before the screen goes black.

It stays black. But on the backdrop of dark, writing appears on the screen.

 _This isn't a blackmail video. It's not educational. This isn't something you're probably going to want to watch more than once, and it's not something that's going to make you feel very good. You can view it as a promise, or you can view it as a threat. The distinction's not something we really care about, and to be honest we've always thought it was a little silly when people tried to explain the difference. View it however you want. But we would recommend you take this video as a statement of intent._

 _We're coming._

The last thing Maleficent sees before the screen again goes black is an image of a heart, a crown, and a key.

* * *

 **Author's End Notes:** The end.

I wish I had something to say here, or some awesome speech to make, but I guess I'm still a little shell-shocked that after so many years I managed to finish this, so. I guess all I can really say is: thank you! Thank you for reading, thank you for existing, I love you all very much and I love these characters very much and it might have taken me a handful of more years to finish this than I intended (nvm I can also say: sorry sorry SORRY), but it was so much fun, and you all made it even more so.

Thank you all for being here, I hope you all enjoyed this even a bit!


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